In this exercise, you enforced the preconditions for time$\_$to$\_$minutes, so that it would always crash when the precondition was violated $($allowing you to respond to this crash with a try$-$except$).$ However, the main reason for enforcing preconditions is to ensure that time$\_$to$\_$minutes crashes in a controlled way. Even without the asserts, time$\_$to$\_$minutes will often crash on inputs that violate the precondition. For example, remove the asserts and try the function call time$\_$to$\_$minutes$(\text{'}$apple$\text{'}).$

Were the asserts necessary to complete this exercise? Why or why not?