In a move that signals a paradigm shift in software engineering, Microsoft has outlined an ambitious long-term vision: the complete elimination of C and C++ code from its products by 2030, to be replaced by Rust. This initiative, spearheaded by Galen Hunt, a distinguished engineer with nearly 30 years at the company, seeks to tackle the persistent challenges of legacy code through a combination of artificial intelligence and advanced algorithms.
The Shift to Rust: Security and Performance
For years, Microsoft has been a vocal advocate for Rust, a modern programming language designed to solve the core "pain points" of C and C++: memory safety and concurrency safety. While C is deeply embedded in the Windows kernel and Win32 APIs, decades of vulnerabilities have demonstrated how difficult it is to prevent memory-corrupting bugs in these older languages.
Rust provides the performance of C/C++ but with built-in safeguards that prevent common programming mistakes leading to crashes and security issues. Microsoft’s commitment to this transition is already evident; the company has enabled Rust developers to use Windows APIs and has begun rewriting critical components of the Windows Kernel and Azure infrastructure in Rust.
A "Previously Unimaginable" Metric: One Million Lines of Code
To achieve such a massive overhaul, the engineering team has established a "North Star" metric: one engineer, one month, one million lines of code. Traditionally, rewriting even a few thousand lines of system code is a high-risk, time-consuming task. To scale to millions of lines, Microsoft is leveraging a sophisticated dual-layered infrastructure:
- Algorithmic Infrastructure: This layer creates a scalable graph over source code, allowing the system to understand complex relationships and dependencies across massive codebases.
- AI Processing Infrastructure: Guided by the algorithmic layer to ensure correctness, AI agents perform the actual code modifications and translations at scale.
This infrastructure is not merely theoretical; it is already operating on real workloads, specifically for code understanding tasks.
Research vs. Immediate Implementation
While the goal of eliminating all C/C++ code by 2030 sounds like a company-wide mandate, recent clarifications emphasize that this is currently a long-term research project within the "Future of Scalable Software Engineering" group under Microsoft CoreAI.
Galen Hunt clarified that Windows is not currently being rewritten in Rust using AI; rather, the team is building the tools and technologies that could make such a massive language migration possible and reliable in the future. This effort is intended to address technical debt at scale rather than incrementally, pioneering techniques that may eventually be deployed across the broader software industry.
The Role of AI in Modern Development
The initiative aligns with a broader trend at Microsoft, where CEO Satya Nadella has noted that 20% to 30% of the company's code is already written by AI. Furthermore, CTO Kevin Scott has expressed expectations that 95% of code could be AI-generated by 2030.
Despite the optimism, the transition faces skepticism. Netizens and industry experts point out that the memory usage of rewritten applications (such as Teams) has been a point of criticism, and the reliability of large-scale AI code translation remains to be fully verified.
Analogy for Understanding: Think of Microsoft’s massive codebase as a city built with aging lead pipes (C/C++) that are prone to leaks and contamination. While the city functions, maintaining it is increasingly dangerous. Microsoft is not just trying to patch the leaks; they are building an automated robotic workforce (AI and Algorithms) to replace the entire plumbing system with modern, leak-proof materials (Rust), aiming to renovate the entire city without turning off the water.
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