It can be one solution but the first thing we can do is to introduce a simple command option that deactivates all @assert checks in Julia programs. For Jaya and Python, I remember the command options turns off assertion checks.
java -disableassertions
python -O
With this feature, Julia developers can insert @assert statements whenever they want for more effective debugging; they don’t have to worry about any performance penalty when their programs execute in a production mode (even though @assert still need to be used carefully).
Would it be difficult to introduce a global read-only flag like debug to Julia?