There is also grep and awk which I use for small log files as well. I've written python scripts for very specific time order dependency analysis. Basically throw away python.
However, at the other end, I need a way to present it, and allow users to filter it, or select objects to trace - basically, if I could replicate something like Splunk or Kibana, either at the console or via a WebUI - I didn't know if there are UI frameworks/components out there that provided similar controls.
You can create interactive plots and webapps without writing javascript.