Isn't the main practical problem also that a console program will forcibly create a console if it doesn't already have one? This is what breaks the approach everyone else uses of "write to stderr under the assumption it will be visible only if the user was prepared for it, without causing clutter otherwise".
It's not a practical problem in practice. The approach everyone else uses is fine, but everybody else is not writing GUI programs for Windows. If you are writing GUI programs for Windows, you print debug output using OutputDebugString and/or to a probably-optional log file.
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Isn't the main practical problem also that a console program will forcibly create a console if it doesn't already have one? This is what breaks the approach everyone else uses of "write to stderr under the assumption it will be visible only if the user was prepared for it, without causing clutter otherwise".
It's not a practical problem in practice. The approach everyone else uses is fine, but everybody else is not writing GUI programs for Windows. If you are writing GUI programs for Windows, you print debug output using OutputDebugString and/or to a probably-optional log file.