Those interested in this may find the following articles of interest:

Microsoft goals [edit: err, Microsoft hiring manager vision-casting goal ] to convert 1 billion lines of code to rust by 2030 via automated tooling enabling "1 engineer, 1 month, 1 million lines of code": https://thenewstack.io/microsofts-bold-goal-replace-1b-lines...

DARPA work towards automating converting C code to Rust using a mix of 6 different teams using different approaches: https://www.darpa.mil/research/programs/translating-all-c-to... Feb 2026 Progress report: https://github.com/DARPA-TRACTOR-Program/Reports/blob/main/F...

▲

jodrellblank 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That is not "Microsoft goals", that is "one employee's LinkedIn comment of his personal goal".

▲

mkehrt 3 hours ago | parent [-]

It's less one guy's plan and more one Microsoft Research team's research goal to investigate technologies that might enable that in a few years. So probably more institutional support than just some guy, but less actually planning on succeeding in the full ambitious goal.

	▲	afdbcreid an hour ago \| parent [-]
		No, after this made some waves he or some other senior (I don't remember exactly) reported that this is not an official plan.

▲

mokre 5 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What with this llms not so good in rust mantra? Something changed? In my experience they are pretty good, but haters gonna hate.

▲

eterm 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There have also been repeated statements from NSA & CISA that they recommend all development should be done in memory safe languages.

It's abundantly clear that there is a strong headwind towards memory safety, whether that's Rust or GC'd languages.

▲

jandrewrogers an hour ago | parent | next [-]

The recommendation is qualified for typical apps that do not have extreme performance or scale requirements. They use Java for many, many things.

C++ is still indicated for systems that are optimizing for performance and scalability characteristics, since it intrinsically requires a lot of "unsafe" constructs.

▲

estebank 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

A headwind makes it harder to advance in the direction you're going. I think you might have meant to say "there is a strong tailwind towards memory safety".

▲

eterm 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You're right, I better do a 360 on my comment ;)

	▲	foolswisdom 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		A 180 might be more useful :)

▲

odo1242 37 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

> A headwind makes it harder to advance in the direction you're going

nit: except in aviation

▲

burakemir 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It would be possible for me to give a more nuanced take, but the upshot is: none of that shit is going to work 100%.

One may get local maxima like an unsafe bonanza, or something that introduces a custom runtime memory management discipline at the cost of performance etc. Fully equivalent C++ to Rust in full generality is mainly wishful thinking. Of course that does not mean one should not try it.

See also my other comment.

	▲	gregw2 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Oh, I 100% agree. The question is how much you can reduce the effort of the port/migration, and in particular the validation effort. I've worked on projects where the core bits of code were "90%" converted by some automated tool, and in my view the overall benefit to the project timeline was probably only 20-30% because of the Amdahl's-law-type overheads of validation and bits of code not supported by the automation/conversion process. Nice, but no silver bullet. Non-idiomatic porting also isn't super-helpful if the resulting code isn't maintainable.
	▲	mkehrt 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		As I pointed out in a sibling comment, the plan isn't for it to work. This is a job posting for a researcher at MSR to investigate what it might look like someday.

▲

blub an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

These kinds of sanitized corporate, feel-good articles are anything but interesting.

A disgruntled former Azure employee posting what a clusterfuck their SW, including their Rust effort is? That’s both rare and interesting.