Don't use assert! Most "release modes" (I was aware of cmake's but looks like VS as well) entirely remove statements if NDEBUG is defined! Thus you're doing a c

Don't use assert! Most "release modes" (I was aware of cmake's but looks like VS as well) entirely remove statements if NDEBUG is defined! Thus you're doing a calculation and not using the result, so it looks to the compiler like the calculation can be skipped if there's no other side effects.