log4net, logging, what is the biggest advantages

Question

How do you best take advantage of your logs and logging tools aside from the obvious that you have gigabytes of text telling you everything your app is doing. I am not currently using any logging in my private projects, only sending an email to myself whenever a unexpected exception occurs and I find this sufficient for my use and I cannot see the big advantage of using f.eks log4net over this.

My view is that logs are rarely used and gives you a big performance overhead and code clutter so I am a bit reluctant to start using it. Still my current employer insist we should use log4net in our projects and it is obviously used a lot so I need some help seeing the light

Answer 1

Use a log reader like L4nDash to give an instant overview of a large log file.

This blog post contains most of what you need to set up Log4Net.