[sfink]

It depends on the application. For some applications, a problem in an assert-less production application is easy to reproduce in an assert-ful debug build, because the relevant inputs are easy to capture and replay.

The reason to not default to leaving all assertions and logging enabled is that performance-sensitive applications are pretty common. They're not performance-first, but the performance of any user-facing application matters. If leaving the asserts in provides good enough performance, do that. If dynamically enabled asserts provide good enough performance, do that -- at least you'll be able to quickly retry things. And since different asserts have different costs, do what the article says and distinguish between assert and debug_assert.