[invalidname]

Print is ephemeral by design.

Logging lets you refine the level of printing and is designed to make sense in the long term. There are many technical differences (structured logging, MDC etc.) that I won't get into but they are important.

To me it's mostly about the way you write the logs vs. the way you write a print. A log tries to solve the generic problem so you can deal with it in production if the need arises by dynamically enabling logs. It solves the core issue of a potential problem. A print is a local bandaid. E.g. when print debugging one would write stuff like "f*ck 1 this was reached"... In logs you would write something sensible like "Subsystem X initialized with the following arguments %s". That's a very different concept.

[ricktdotorg]

totally agree re: structured logging. my intro to that was w/GCP Logging and it changed my mind on when and what to log. proper structured logging and keying metrics/alerts from those metrics is extremely satisfying and legitimately useful.