> If I was writing an embedded system, or a system 
   > with soft-to-hard realtime requirements, or one 
   > where flat straight line performance was the only 
   > requirement that counted, sure, I might ditch or
   > constrain logging.

I've worked on embedded systems, and logging is still extremely important, if not more important because of the difficulty of seeing what's going on (it's hard to reproduce events that only happen in a truck while you're inside your office).

In one case, a team had been trying for months to debug a problem, but when proper logging was added, the issue was easily fixed.