Seems crazy to commit to that now when the word “rust” will clearly become a slur for robotic lifeforms sometime this century.
ThrowawayAl2018 on
How about replacing Windows 11 with Windows 12 (ie: Windows 10 rebranded) instead. Else I am running Linux instead of dealing with their ever increasing slop.
C/C++ code and compiler been around for generations, most of Linux kernel & drivers is written in that language.
nck_pi on
Way to misinterpreted stuff, well done
Acc87 on
*Our strategy is to combine AI and Algorithms to rewrite Microsoft’s largest codebases.*
oh, no way this won’t spectacularly fail then.
And oh god the techbro marketing speech following that, dude clearly has only a vague clue about what that all entails.
Metaldwarf on
I’m not a programmer. What is the benefit of Rust over C/C++ ?
requisition31 on
Surely this isn’t totally true?
calibrono on
1 engineer, 1 month, 1 million lines of code? Who’s going to review all that? How much debt and vulns is that going to introduce? Absolutely mental target.
Akegata on
“Our North Star is ‘1 engineer, 1 month, 1 million lines of code.’”
Someone’s gonna have fun reading through those pull requests. I guess AI will take care of that as well.
pipedwget on
That Windows will be built using AI so expect rampant bugs that won”t be easy to fix.
I’ve always kept Windows for gaming but AI is gonna kill gaming PCs.. Linux is the way and it runs much better on older hardware. Hopefully more games continue to release on Linux.
Fast-Mushroom9724 on
Task Manager gonna be running on overtime
He_Who_Browses_RDT on
“And it will all be *vibe coding*” /S
EmergencyLaugh5063 on
This reads like a PR stunt who’s primary motivation is to create and demonstrate an AI success story and the distant secondary motivation is maybe replacing some bits of Microsoft’s ecosystem with Rust.
LowEquivalent6491 on
People won’t have the money to buy that much RAM.
IngwiePhoenix on
The rustification must continue…
Bah, still super split on it. On the one hand, I get that using Rust has advantages. But on the other, just yeeting out all C/C++ code seems like a fatal mistake o.o…
drpestilence on
So glad I finally fully switched to Linux
KrustyClownX on
Microsoft has bigger problems. They should worry about fixing Windows and getting rid of all the bloat rather than rewriting their crappy software in a different language.
G1ngerBoy on
They will have to figure out a way to replace all their paying customers pretty soon too as no one likes what they are doing.
AscendedViking7 on
RemindMe! 5 years
Oh man, this is going to fail *spectacularly.*
thuiop1 on
*one random clown saying they will use AI to convert the code at the rate of 1 million LOC per month per engineer (simply impossible)
Antique_Grapefruit_5 on
I mean, if it’s that easy, let’s just use AI to write a new OS that’s compatible with Windows apps. We’ll just run Microsoft right out of business. /s
m98789 on
As someone who actually knows the Word and Excel desktop code bases I can tell you this is highly unlikely of being successful.
Excel is a spaghetti monster of global variables. Word has some functions that are many thousands of lines long and decades old and know one wants to touch the internals of due to potentially breaking one of the many thousands of features in subtle or not so subtle ways.
A lot of it is a tinder box with wack a mole held up by duck tape and chicken wire. When we went from C to C++ it was more of a window dressing exercise; the code is still largely C.
I can’t imagine going from this to Rust shipped in just 4 years. AI tools can’t handle large and complex codebases well.
ibrahimtuna0012 on
The only thing that comes to my mind when I hear Rust, is that toxic game.
jenny_905 on
Windows is absolutely full of legacy code dating way back to the 90s. All is C++, as far as I know.
Microsoft would be better off starting fresh if they genuinely wanted to replace it all with Rust.
MooseBoys on
> My goal is to eliminate every line of C and C++ from Microsoft by 2030. Our strategy is to combine AI *and* Algorithms to rewrite Microsoft’s largest codebases. -Galen Hunt
And my goal is Sydney Sweeney and Scarlett Johansson at the same time. We can all dream, right?
Tapeworm1979 on
No, they won’t.
I mean seriously. No, they won’t.
Worldly-Time-3201 on
Imagine a sweaty Steve Ballmer running around the stage announcing this to the stooges that would attend such a thing.
elegance78 on
It would be ideal if you sorted out Outlook 365 first….
soconn on
Solitaire is going to be LIT!
eerie_space on
An AI-made Rust codebase shoulds like the ultimate shitshow.
There are going to be high paying jobs fixing that shit (*provided that AIs even get that stuff working*)
noodle-face on
Sounds cool on paper but anyone who is a.software engineer here knows this will be a disaster.
t3chguy1 on
Problem with Windows is not C and memory management, it’s Satya’s vision and project management
deltalimes on
can’t wait for everything in windows to be AI vibe coded. so cool.
FelbrHostu on
There’s a reason why the core Windows code is still legacy C and not C++. This is pie-in-the-sky wish-casting.
Plenty-Huckleberry94 on
Something tells me they will fuck this up immensely
my-cup-noodle on
Yeah good luck on the rewrite. Please use Copilot.
alseick on
1. It is harder, but still pretty easy to fuck up in Rust, it is up to you basically
2. Crates, even popular ones and language are still immature.
3. If you want to reduce code bloat, have advanced generic code – Rust is much less readable than modern C++, unless you use macros… Rust macros offer more safety, but that comes with quite a big cost, doing simple stuff from C++ is PITA in Rust. Ask AI to write more complex macros in Rust, you will see it fail easily, just like most people do.
Code clarity is important for both extending and maintaining/reading/investigating code.
I suspect in the future C++ with more runtime constraints / better compiler checks may make Rust redundant.
Knowledge_Hunter_ on
They forgot to say that it will be 70% vibe coded and 30% AI
SylvaraTheDev on
Honestly? This isn’t a win.
Say you remove every single memory bug, LOGIC bugs are routinely much more dangerous and that isn’t fixed by languages like Rust.
For where Microsoft is in 2025 I don’t think Rust does anything valuable for consumers or developers.
Rust has genuinely awful syntax and is only better than C and C++ on the conceptual side of things like the memory management, but getting kneecapped on syntax is enough of a drawback that the benefits are not going to be as big as everyone thinks.
Remember also that you MUST do unsafe ops to do syscalls which is… well, everywhere in an OS.
The dangerous zones remain dangerous, and everywhere else is vulnerable to bad design and logic bugs, both of which Microsoft is more than happy to keep staggering into as seen in Windows 11, Azure, and the rest of their terrible stack.
Rust does not fix logic errors, it does not fix poor architecture and practices, and for something like Windows where you are CONSTANTLY fighting to keep legacy compat and layering bad features on top of bad features? You’re going to lose any noticeable benefit Rust gives you.
The OS may as well be written in direct assembly for all of the memory safety benefits you will see.
38 Comments
Seems crazy to commit to that now when the word “rust” will clearly become a slur for robotic lifeforms sometime this century.
How about replacing Windows 11 with Windows 12 (ie: Windows 10 rebranded) instead. Else I am running Linux instead of dealing with their ever increasing slop.
C/C++ code and compiler been around for generations, most of Linux kernel & drivers is written in that language.
Way to misinterpreted stuff, well done
*Our strategy is to combine AI and Algorithms to rewrite Microsoft’s largest codebases.*
oh, no way this won’t spectacularly fail then.
And oh god the techbro marketing speech following that, dude clearly has only a vague clue about what that all entails.
I’m not a programmer. What is the benefit of Rust over C/C++ ?
Surely this isn’t totally true?
1 engineer, 1 month, 1 million lines of code? Who’s going to review all that? How much debt and vulns is that going to introduce? Absolutely mental target.
“Our North Star is ‘1 engineer, 1 month, 1 million lines of code.’”
Someone’s gonna have fun reading through those pull requests. I guess AI will take care of that as well.
That Windows will be built using AI so expect rampant bugs that won”t be easy to fix.
I’ve always kept Windows for gaming but AI is gonna kill gaming PCs.. Linux is the way and it runs much better on older hardware. Hopefully more games continue to release on Linux.
Task Manager gonna be running on overtime
“And it will all be *vibe coding*” /S
This reads like a PR stunt who’s primary motivation is to create and demonstrate an AI success story and the distant secondary motivation is maybe replacing some bits of Microsoft’s ecosystem with Rust.
People won’t have the money to buy that much RAM.
The rustification must continue…
Bah, still super split on it. On the one hand, I get that using Rust has advantages. But on the other, just yeeting out all C/C++ code seems like a fatal mistake o.o…
So glad I finally fully switched to Linux
Microsoft has bigger problems. They should worry about fixing Windows and getting rid of all the bloat rather than rewriting their crappy software in a different language.
They will have to figure out a way to replace all their paying customers pretty soon too as no one likes what they are doing.
RemindMe! 5 years
Oh man, this is going to fail *spectacularly.*
*one random clown saying they will use AI to convert the code at the rate of 1 million LOC per month per engineer (simply impossible)
I mean, if it’s that easy, let’s just use AI to write a new OS that’s compatible with Windows apps. We’ll just run Microsoft right out of business. /s
As someone who actually knows the Word and Excel desktop code bases I can tell you this is highly unlikely of being successful.
Excel is a spaghetti monster of global variables. Word has some functions that are many thousands of lines long and decades old and know one wants to touch the internals of due to potentially breaking one of the many thousands of features in subtle or not so subtle ways.
A lot of it is a tinder box with wack a mole held up by duck tape and chicken wire. When we went from C to C++ it was more of a window dressing exercise; the code is still largely C.
I can’t imagine going from this to Rust shipped in just 4 years. AI tools can’t handle large and complex codebases well.
The only thing that comes to my mind when I hear Rust, is that toxic game.
Windows is absolutely full of legacy code dating way back to the 90s. All is C++, as far as I know.
Microsoft would be better off starting fresh if they genuinely wanted to replace it all with Rust.
> My goal is to eliminate every line of C and C++ from Microsoft by 2030. Our strategy is to combine AI *and* Algorithms to rewrite Microsoft’s largest codebases. -Galen Hunt
And my goal is Sydney Sweeney and Scarlett Johansson at the same time. We can all dream, right?
No, they won’t.
I mean seriously. No, they won’t.
Imagine a sweaty Steve Ballmer running around the stage announcing this to the stooges that would attend such a thing.
It would be ideal if you sorted out Outlook 365 first….
Solitaire is going to be LIT!
An AI-made Rust codebase shoulds like the ultimate shitshow.
There are going to be high paying jobs fixing that shit (*provided that AIs even get that stuff working*)
Sounds cool on paper but anyone who is a.software engineer here knows this will be a disaster.
Problem with Windows is not C and memory management, it’s Satya’s vision and project management
can’t wait for everything in windows to be AI vibe coded. so cool.
There’s a reason why the core Windows code is still legacy C and not C++. This is pie-in-the-sky wish-casting.
Something tells me they will fuck this up immensely
Yeah good luck on the rewrite. Please use Copilot.
1. It is harder, but still pretty easy to fuck up in Rust, it is up to you basically
2. Crates, even popular ones and language are still immature.
3. If you want to reduce code bloat, have advanced generic code – Rust is much less readable than modern C++, unless you use macros… Rust macros offer more safety, but that comes with quite a big cost, doing simple stuff from C++ is PITA in Rust. Ask AI to write more complex macros in Rust, you will see it fail easily, just like most people do.
Code clarity is important for both extending and maintaining/reading/investigating code.
I suspect in the future C++ with more runtime constraints / better compiler checks may make Rust redundant.
They forgot to say that it will be 70% vibe coded and 30% AI
Honestly? This isn’t a win.
Say you remove every single memory bug, LOGIC bugs are routinely much more dangerous and that isn’t fixed by languages like Rust.
For where Microsoft is in 2025 I don’t think Rust does anything valuable for consumers or developers.
Rust has genuinely awful syntax and is only better than C and C++ on the conceptual side of things like the memory management, but getting kneecapped on syntax is enough of a drawback that the benefits are not going to be as big as everyone thinks.
Remember also that you MUST do unsafe ops to do syscalls which is… well, everywhere in an OS.
The dangerous zones remain dangerous, and everywhere else is vulnerable to bad design and logic bugs, both of which Microsoft is more than happy to keep staggering into as seen in Windows 11, Azure, and the rest of their terrible stack.
Rust does not fix logic errors, it does not fix poor architecture and practices, and for something like Windows where you are CONSTANTLY fighting to keep legacy compat and layering bad features on top of bad features? You’re going to lose any noticeable benefit Rust gives you.
The OS may as well be written in direct assembly for all of the memory safety benefits you will see.