[TeMPOraL]

> unless you are writing c++

Guilty as charged.

> If you were to take hard crashes into account, you would even have to log before each operation instead of after

Yes, that's exactly what I see done and do for large enough operations (substeps of those operations only log when they're done).

> basically reverting to printf-debugging

That's what logging is, fundamentally. printf debugging, but with your own printf that has a few more knobs.