The reason there is no logging yet is because we want to get it _right_ rather than landing a permanent temporary solution. And there were simply more urgent things to do so far.
Also note that if you use an LSP or the web app, you can inspect the live values in your code simply by hovering over them.
I agree typst needs better debugging tools, but you're a bit harsh. It has things like `repr` that can often be used to inspect objects, and `panic` can be used as a (admittedly crappy) substitute for printing a value to the console.
I don't think the debugging experience is worse than in LaTeX (a low bar admittedly): you can print to the console in LaTeX but it's drowned in other messages. Instead of grepping the console in practice I use \show\thing, which is basically the same as doing panic(thing) in typst. What I do is put commented-out "panic(variable)" here and there, and use the comment/uncomment shortcut in the editor to see the value of the variable. With typst's incremental compilation I get immediate feedback, so a better experience than in LaTeX.