Microsoft Wants to Develop Tech to "Eliminate Every Line of C and C++" by 2030
"Our strategy is to combine AI and Algorithms to rewrite Microsoft’s largest codebases."
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Microsoft is the king of controversial decisions lately, but technology must evolve, so I guess you can't blame it for introducing something new, even if it's not a fan-favorite.
Its engineer, Galen Hunt, announced his desire to "eliminate every line of C and C++ from Microsoft by 2030" by combining AI and algorithms "to rewrite Microsoft’s largest codebases" as well as "evolve and augment our infrastructure to enable translating Microsoft’s largest C and C++ systems to Rust." To do so, he is looking for an IC5 Principal Software Engineer.
"Our North Star is “1 engineer, 1 month, 1 million lines of code”. To accomplish this previously unimaginable task, we’ve built a powerful code processing infrastructure. Our algorithmic infrastructure creates a scalable graph over source code at scale. Our AI processing infrastructure then enables us to apply AI agents, guided by algorithms, to make code modifications at scale. The core of this infrastructure is already operating at scale on problems such as code understanding."
This made internet users worry that Windows would soon be fully written by AI, but Hunt went on to clarify his idea. Good news: Windows is not being rewritten in Rust with AI. This is Hunt's research project to build tech to make migration from language to language possible.
"The intent of my post was to find like-minded engineers to join us on the next stage of this multi-year endeavor – not to set a new strategy for Windows 11+ or to imply that Rust is an endpoint."
So we can breathe a little easier for now, although 30% of Microsoft's code is already written by AI, so the day when it's all replaced might not be that far away.
As for the reason for Rust replacing C, Hunt states that the latter has no memory safety or concurrency safety: "Of course, for a single C or C++ code base, these qualities can be achieved with extraordinary discipline and effort – and lost with just a single mistake. With Rust, can be proven by the compiler."
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