Sorry to hear that. The problem with assert() at production code is that it crashes the program. IMNSHO, it's a medicine worse than the disease (is this why we get a "blue screen" on a popular OS?). Most, if not all tools should be lenient about errors - both user errors and system/environment errors - not just safety systems. There are very few cases that a tool should say "there is a problem, please contact the vendor" - and even then it is unreasonable to do it while crashing (maybe the user is willing to give up the last task but wants to start over with a different task).
If you are not convinced, I am not able to explain it in any simpler and clearer way. Thanks for your time.