That's such a bad take after reading the article. If you're going to write a system that preallocates and is based on hard assumptions about max size - the panic/unwrap approach is reasonable.
The config bug reaching prod without this being caught and pinpointed immediately is the strange part.
It's reasonable when testing protocols exercise the panic scenario. This is the problem with punting on error recovery. Nobody checks faults that propagate across domains of responsibility.
The config bug reaching prod without this being caught and pinpointed immediately is the strange part.