B011 is misleading, and the advice doesn't sound good

B011 Do not call assert False since python -O removes these calls. Instead callers should raise AssertionError().

There are two problems with this:

1. Removal of assertions with -O is not limited to assert False cases, it removes all assertions. So the message is misleading.
2. The suggestion to replace this assert with raise AssertionError() is not a good one, because such a construct cannot be disabled by disabling assertions when one explicitly wants to do that.

Given these considerations, I cannot think of a good use case or a fix for B011 in the first place, so I suggest removing it altogether.

[maxfischer2781]

assert definitely has its place, so warning for every occurrence seems misleading. The entire point of assertions is that they can be switched off. So one actually should use them similar to how @gaul describes it: Have some costly checks that can be disabled in production.

However, -O implies the assertion machinery is switched off. Entirely. That means two things:

1. Explicitly raising AssertionError defeats the purpose of assert being optional. That means the suggestion of B011 encourages misuse of assertions.
2. Explicitly catching AssertionError leads to different -O-behaviour at a distance. It is a better indication of misusing assertions.

A better replacement for assert False is raise NotImplementedError, since it usually indicates a dead code path. However, I would rather suggest to flag except AssertionError, perhaps flag raise AssertionError as well. They indicate that assertions are misused for control flow, which they are not suitable for.

[neutrinoceros]

Came here to report basically the same problem. I see this is more controversial than I expected. Would it be acceptable to have an opinionated version of this warning (B911?) that would flag all assertions outside of tests functions and classes, assuming those are all named with test as a case-insensitive prefix ?