The main advantage of printf is that it's usually just there, one line of code away. Setting up a useful debugger session can be much more involved (it varies w

The main advantage of printf is that it's usually just there, one line of code away. Setting up a useful debugger session can be much more involved (it varies widely depending on what you're working on), so my ADHD mind will absolutely try to get away with printf first if it's possible. Sometimes it ends up being counter-productive, and you just learn to recognize when to bother with experience. That said, there are some contexts where this is reversed - printing something useful without affecting the debugged code may actually be more involved than, say, attaching a JTAG probe and stepping through with a debugger. Though sometimes both of those are a luxury you can't afford, so you better be able to manage without them anyway (and this may happen to you regardless of whether you're working on low-level hardware bring-up or some shiny new JavaScript framework).