Pick any "how do you debug?" submission anywhere, and you'll see a lot of people claiming that using printf, etc, is retarded in the age of good debuggers.
Maybe they're just a noisy minority.
Maybe they're just a noisy minority.
The problem is there are a lot of problems that aren't debugger friendly, especially if you are new to a particular domain. The kernel, timing-related problems, remote systems, production systems (you have intelligent logging, right?), etc., all have extremely valid reasons for using printf debugging.
Those prints or printfs are great to get a quick overview of what's going on, if you ask me... instead of stepping through the whole thing.