Try not to rely on assert for logic in production code

[n8henrie]

With optimizations enabled, it will completely disappear, meaning for consistent behavior you need to reproduce its functionality. Additionally, users will appreciate being able to catch a more meaningful error than AssertionError in their dependent code.

https://docs.python.org/3/reference/simple_stmts.html#the-assert-statement

The current code generator emits no code for an assert statement when optimization is requested at compile time.

https://stackoverflow.com/a/1838411/1588795