Volish distinguished engineer Galen Hunt said: “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. Our North Star is an engineer, a month, one a 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.”
That will rattle a few old hands, but it lines up with the long-running cunning plan to use AI to refactor the NT and Windows kernel, along with other crown-jewel code.
Vole signposted the direction in 2023 when it said parts of the Windows kernel would be rewritten in Rust, after Azure CTO Mark Russinovich blocked new C and C++ projects and pushed teams towards Rust.
Microsoft, Azure CTO Mark Russinovich said the firm was “all-in” on Rust, and the outfit has since ramped up its use of the memory-safe language.
At the time, Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich said it was working on “more automated translation of C and C++ to Rust [using] LLMs.”
Hunt’s LinkedIn post reads like the next chapter, and it comes with a hiring pitch for a principal software engineer to help make the machinery less theoretical.
“The purpose of this Principal Software Engineer role is to help us evolve and augment our infrastructure to enable translating Microsoft’s largest C and C++ systems to Rust,” the post notes. “A critical requirement for this role is experience building production quality systems-level code in Rust—preferably at least 3 years of experience writing systems-level code in Rust. Compiler, database, or OS implementation experience is highly desired. While compiler implementation experience is not required to apply, the willingness to acquire that experience in our team is required.”
The Rust refactoring crew sits inside the Future of Scalable Software Engineering group, tucked into the Engineering Horizons organisation in Microsoft CoreAI.
"Its mission is to build capabilities to allow Microsoft and our customers to eliminate technical debt at scale. We pioneer new tools and techniques with internal customers and partners, and then work with other product groups to deploy those capabilities at scale across Microsoft and across the industry,” Hunt said.