Logstalgia till your console freezes over

A year back, published a(n ill-named) package (Prolog) to rid the day of tedious Console.Write/Debug.Log cycles. Powered by Mono.Cecil, took upon itself to log every function call.

If memory serves, did/does work pretty well.

So why are we here? Reasons - TLDR old habits die. harder. So here is an article about logging in C# for debugging purposes. The bread and lobster.

And how I am fixing it.

Wait, logging is broken in C#?

PowerShell got brogging rights -

# Say 'Hi'
"Hi"

From here, all downhill. Be it .net or Unity3D, an assortment of Console.Write / Debug.Log / [insert pompous paraphernalia].

What logs in VS does not log in a console app does not log in Unity so, if you are going "cross platform", steam the logster yourself.

Can we fix this? What?

A casual logging API (re: PowerShell) should be concise and readable. We do ✨not✨ want a using dep for the sake of debugging.

90% of the time we are going to remove these traces; the remaining 10% of the time use a dedicated logger (so we know not to delete user traces).

Ergo logging via system/engine level scoped (namespaced) APIs, this:

A DISTRACTION™️

Pure C# solution

Tried variants around...

++ log / $"message";  // (++/--) for severity?

⚠️ The above does not constitute a well formed C# statement. Unless willing to eat your shirt (we are getting there), go with 🌊

public static class Log{

    public static void Message(object arg) 
    => Console.WriteLine(arg);

}

Which you may use without using, like so:

Log.Message("(\´ ∀ \`*)");  # print (´ ∀ `*)

Eat your shirt

So. Was looking into this while reviewing log traces in Howl, the symbolic notation for C# -

More about this later - question: what would be an idiom that shines 〜 usability, easy mapping to C# (bidi conversions with) and all

Tea

@eelstork

Been a week I been using Howl now logging like the 80s went back to the future 〜 #Howl and #CSharp #programming in #Unity (and later, .net)

08:34 AM - 08 Aug 2020

Howl imp:

⊐̥ System.Console;

‒ ○ log{

    ‒̥ ㄹ message { ╰ → WriteLine(value); }
    ‒̥ ㄹ warning { ╰ → WriteLine(value); }
    ‒̥ ㄹ error   { ╰ → WriteLine(value); }

}

We map chicks to lobsters internally.

// ... Howl internals
("🐤", "log.warning =", alt: "[chick]"),
// ... Have your chick and eat it too.

Next: preparing a small article about begin/end pattern annoyances and (pure C#) ways to kiss the beast 🖖🏼