Microsoft wants to replace its entire C and C++ codebase, perhaps by 2030

Microsoft wants to translate its codebase to Rust, and is hiring people to make it happen.

“My goal is to eliminate every line of C and C++ from Microsoft by 2030,” Microsoft distinguished engineer Galen Hunt wrote in a recent LinkedIn post.

“Our strategy is to combine AI and Algorithms to rewrite Microsoft’s largest codebases,” he added. “Our North Star is ‘1 engineer, 1 month, 1 million lines of code.’”

Hunt’s post mentions a job ad for a Principal Software Engineer who will be expected to work on the tools Microsoft is building to pull this off.

“The purpose of this … role is to help us evolve and augment our infrastructure to enable translating Microsoft’s largest C and C++ systems to Rust,” Hunt wrote.

Microsoft has already built some tools to make the move.

“We’ve built a powerful code processing infrastructure,” Hunt wrote. “Our algorithmic infrastructure ...