I've been enjoying a featherweight alternative to log levels, made possible by org-mode. I've done this a couple of times now and am feeling good enough about it to recommend it to others.
The next time you write a little throwaway script:
Step 1: Add asterisks to the front of your printf traces.
Step 2: Tee your STDOUT / STDERR to a file named
log.org
Step 3: Open the log file in org-mode.
Step 4: Enjoy!
This illustration uses a Github scraper as an example:
This is no substitute for real structured logging, of course :)
You can tail the logfile with M-x auto-revert-mode.
That is all!