I am guessing that there are dozens or maybe hundreds of assertion type errors like this buried in the code. Only a small fraction of them turn out to be real e

I am guessing that there are dozens or maybe hundreds of assertion type errors like this buried in the code. Only a small fraction of them turn out to be real errors that actually occur in the field. So presumably the guy who coded the original error message didn't anticipate real issues and likely didn't have a handy resolution available. Only later, once the code was in the wild and the error started happening reasonably frequently in the real world did customer support investigate the problem more. Eventually a workaround was developed and made available on a website.