Asserts can't be caught. This is good because some errors I don't want to be wrapped in try/catch, at least not on the development server. But Asserts seem awefully dangerous. If they get onto production, it can hang the ASP.NET server with a msgbox.

//Don't want this on prod even if debug=true is in the web.config
#if DEBUG
    //A future client programmer can wrap this in a try{}catch{}
    if (!EverythingIsOkay)
        throw new InvalidOperationException("Dagnabbit, programming error");

    //This stops the but has less information that an
    // Exception and hangs the server if this accidentally 
    // runs on production
    System.Diagnostics.Debug.Assert(!EverythingIsOkay);
#endif

Is there better way to communicate an violation of a inviolable condition to a developer without risking hanging IIS?

UPDATE: After reading the first replies, I guess the answer hinges on a foolproof way to detect when code is running in a development environment and when it is on a production server, or figuring out how to throw an exception that can't be caught and ignored.