I find that strace (or dtruss) is more useful when you know less about what exactly you're trying to find. A log of syscalls is often exactly the right granular

I find that strace (or dtruss) is more useful when you know less about what exactly you're trying to find. A log of syscalls is often exactly the right granularity to find out the gist of what a process you didn't write is trying (and failing) to do. So I think the comparison, despite the superficial similarity and similar mechanism of action, isn't really fair.