Seems interesting. Wonder whether this is going to further spark Rust adoption in the enterprise.
It’s more likely that they see rust as a good successor to their legacy c++ code. Microsoft has always been heavily invested in C++ after all.
They don’t want to sell rust. It’s not a money maker for them.
The article is clear that this is about C# not C++. Is the romance for managed languages wearing off - I wonder what issues they are seeing.
Microsoft is big in C++, but they are also pushing C++ to be a lot safer. Modern C++ isn’t as safe as rust, but it is still much safer than C or C++98.
Tail latency and memory usage?
It’s hard for me to come up with any other big advantages that Rust has and C# couldn’t easily lift.
Hopefully they won’t come up with some kind of a Rust/CLI, a version of Rust with GC support.
I think enterprises are the early adopters and proponents of Rust. They seem so stoked about the memory safety aspect.
As a C++ developer memory safety catches my attention. I keep rejecting code reviews - in 2024! - because of naked new. Since experience proves I can’t get people to use the memory safety modern C++ offers I need to force the issue.
unfortunaty rust has other choices that don’t play well with our existing C++ so it will be a long road.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Although headcount at Microsoft might currently be down – by two percent compared to the previous year – recruitment persists at the Windows giant.
The Substrate does the heavy lifting behind the scenes for Microsoft’s cloud services, making a rewrite into Rust quite a statement of intent.
Microsoft said: “We are forming a new team focused on enabling the adoption of the Rust programming language as the foundation to modernizing global scale platform services, and beyond.”
Considering the growing enthusiasm for memory-safe programming, something Rust delivers with far less effort than the likes of C++, Microsoft’s move is unsurprising.
Memorably, a Microsoft engineer had to rapidly backpedal issue a clarification after proudly proclaiming that Office 365 was being ported to JavaScript.
In this instance, while Microsoft remains committed to C#, at least in public, its actions over the last few years and the job posting are indications that the company is keeping its options open.
The original article contains 357 words, the summary contains 155 words. Saved 57%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
re-implementation of existing global scale C# based services to Rust.
Rusty azure serverless functions?
Support for Rust on Azure Functions would be awesome. Custom handlers have a lot of limitations, are poorly documented, and are difficult to use. Having Rust be treated a first-class language would make it so much easier to write performant Function Apps in a language that isn’t C#.
