Microsoft will soon have millions of lines of new code written to replace C and C++. A combination of AI, algorithms, and human-written code will overhaul massive libraries across Windows and other products.
Galen Hunt, a distinguished engineer at Microsoft, posted about a job opening for an IC5 Principal Software Engineer. The person who fills that role will be part of a team that translates Microsoft’s C and C++ systems to Rust.
Microsoft has been shifting parts of its code to Rust for years. As highlighted by Thurrott.com, Microsoft started rewriting parts of the Windows Kernel using Rust in 2023. Even though AI hadn’t exploded into the public eye back then, Microsoft was already experimenting with using LLMs to translate C and C++ code into Rust.
Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Enterprise and OS Security David Weston spoke on the transition to Rust last year. An Azure blog post by Jeffrey Cooperstein from 2023 explained several benefits of transitioning to Rust.
“Decades of vulnerabilities have proven how difficult it is to prevent memory-corrupting bugs when using C/C++. While garbage-collected languages like C# or Java have proven more resilient to these issues, there are scenarios where they cannot be used. For such cases, we’re betting on Rust as the alternative to C/C++. Rust is a modern language designed to compete with the performance C/C++, but with memory safety and thread safety guarantees built into the language. While we are not able to rewrite everything in Rust overnight, we’ve already adopted Rust in some of the most critical components of Azure’s infrastructure. We expect our adoption of Rust to expand substantially over time.”
Cooperstein highlighted the “major investment” Microsoft will make over several years regarding the move to Rust.
The new role advertised by Hunt will continue the work to modernize Microsoft’s code as part of the Future of Scalable Software Engineering group in the EngHorizons organization in Microsoft CoreAI.
Is Rust better than C and C++ when it comes to coding?
Rust is better than C and C++ in several ways. Rust is safer, more secure, and generally easier to write in than C or C++.
Additionally, since Rust is much newer than C or C++, fresh code needs to be written. Some legacy code can feel like patchwork or “spaghetti code,” making a fresh rewrite an improvement if done correctly.
C++ has a large ecosystem, so shifting to Rust can require more work.
What do you think about AI being used to replace Microsoft’s code at a massive scale? Let me know in the comments.
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