printf is superior and more concise, and snprintf is practically the only C string manipulation function that is not painful to use.

Try to print a 32-bit unsigned int as hexadecimal number of exactly 8 digits, using cout. You can do std::hex and std::setw(8) and std::setfill('0') and don't forget to use std::dec afterwards, or you can just, you know, printf("%08x") like a sane person.

Just don't forget to use -Werror=format but that is the default option on many compilers today.

C++23 now includes std::print which is exactly like printf but better, so the whole argument is over.