You should probably set up logging for your Python code, for any important information you need to keep track of. But, when you need to do a little bit of "print debugging", Python's f-strings are a really convenient option.

F-strings allow you to include variables directly in strings, without using methods like str.format():

x = 18
print(f"Total apples: {x}")
# Total apples: 18

Even better for debugging, if you add = to the end of the variable, you get both the variable name and value printed, making it very easy to quickly keep track of what's happening:

y = x + 5
z = y * 2
print(f"{y=}, {z=}")
# y=23, z=46

There are lots of other useful formatting tricks you can do with f-strings, like formatting large numbers with commas:

large_n = 1048213
print(f"{large_n:,}")
# 1,048,213

See this cheat sheet for more.