I agree with your main points but to be nit-picky, every C/C++ project I've ever worked on was/is able to 100% compile out logging code with a compile time flag

I agree with your main points but to be nit-picky, every C/C++ project I've ever worked on was/is able to 100% compile out logging code with a compile time flag. No "if debug" is left in the compiled code, it just doesn't exist.