Rust's First Debugging Survey Shows Most Developers Skip the Debugger Entirely
DevOps.com, Wednesday, September 9th, 2026
Only 46 percent of 2,300 Rust developers use a debugger; 81 percent reach for print statements instead.
A survey of more than 2,300 Rust developers found only 46 percent use a debugger, while 81 percent rely on print statements because logs and prints are simply easier or faster.
The reported causes are specific and fixable: debuggers represent Rust enums and collections poorly, and async code presents a call stack that does not match the source.
The findings are a useful input for anyone choosing a systems language, and a clear roadmap signal for tooling maintainers. They also suggest that observability investment may return more than debugger training in Rust codebases.