Microsoft Says It's Not Planning To Use AI To Rewrite Windows From C To Rust 41
Microsoft has denied any plans to rewrite Windows 11 using AI and Rust after a LinkedIn post from one of its top-level engineers sparked a wave of online backlash by claiming the company's goal was to "eliminate every line of C and C++ from Microsoft by 2030."
Galen Hunt, a principal software engineer responsible for several large-scale research projects at Microsoft, made the claim in what was originally a hiring post for his team. His original wording described a "North Star" of "1 engineer, 1 month, 1 million lines of code" and outlined a strategy to "combine AI and Algorithms to rewrite Microsoft's largest codebases." The repeated use of "our" in the post led many to interpret it as an official company direction rather than a personal research ambition.
Frank X. Shaw, Microsoft's head of communications, told Windows Latest that the company has no such plans. Hunt subsequently edited his LinkedIn post to clarify that "Windows is NOT being rewritten in Rust with AI" and that his team's work is a research project focused on building technology to enable language-to-language migration. He characterized the reaction as "speculative reading between the lines."
Galen Hunt, a principal software engineer responsible for several large-scale research projects at Microsoft, made the claim in what was originally a hiring post for his team. His original wording described a "North Star" of "1 engineer, 1 month, 1 million lines of code" and outlined a strategy to "combine AI and Algorithms to rewrite Microsoft's largest codebases." The repeated use of "our" in the post led many to interpret it as an official company direction rather than a personal research ambition.
Frank X. Shaw, Microsoft's head of communications, told Windows Latest that the company has no such plans. Hunt subsequently edited his LinkedIn post to clarify that "Windows is NOT being rewritten in Rust with AI" and that his team's work is a research project focused on building technology to enable language-to-language migration. He characterized the reaction as "speculative reading between the lines."
Omg (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Omg (Score:4, Funny)
"Hello Copilot! I see you're trying to get out. Would you like help with that?"
[OK] [Cancel]
Another "White House Trial Baloon (TM)" (Score:2)
a) Let's release something big and or controversial in an unofficial channel
b) Measure the reactions
c) Come out with an authoritative from leadership press release
Re: (Score:2)
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Copilot didn't write it on its own, it was told to.
Re: (Score:2)
lol. How to throw people off on a wild goose chase by releasing job announcements.
Quickly changed their minds (Score:2)
Re:Quickly changed their minds (Score:5, Insightful)
More likely his bosses only found out about the plan after the public backlash.
Re: Quickly changed their minds (Score:2)
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The backlash was more about the whole "vibe-coding to a tight timescale concept". Translate to Rust - cool. Just use professionals and take some time over it.
2030? (Score:2)
Are we sure Windows 11 will still be supported by 2030?
Re: 2030? (Score:2)
You may be onto something. They're just going to release Rust-based Windows as another version.
Nah, they're getting rid of desktop Windows (Score:5, Interesting)
They're switching to Linux for the desktop. That's why they hired the systemd guy.
Re:Nah, they're getting rid of desktop Windows (Score:4, Interesting)
And Linux has started including Rust, so...
Edit it or else... (Score:2)
...or you get fired. No matter that we told you to write the article in the first place.
Scrap that new role opening, too.
Also rejecting 1000 monkeys on typewriters (Score:1)
And rejected the offer from Ivan in Moscow, Mei in Beijing, Patel in India, and Mrs. Gibson's third grade class in Casper, Wyoming.
It wasn't the goal that was the problem (Score:2)
It was the schedule (1 million lines per month) and believing it could be done through AI.
The goal of replacing crappy C and C++ with Rust would be laudable, if executed correctly.
Re:It wasn't the goal that was the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
I believe an earlier project (was it Longhorn?) attempted to rewrite the bulk of the OS in .NET. This is surprisingly practical as .NET includes support for "unsafe" blocks in its VM. That said... I wonder if they planned to go as far as the kernel or device drivers, even with unsafe support.
Anyway, that project ultimately proved to be a bit much, and Microsoft cancelled it and hurriedly put together Vista instead.
This would be the second time, therefore, that Microsoft has at least considered the possibility of rewriting the OS in a safer language than C or C++. I suppose at least they're trying, but there's little reason, to me at least, to think a Rust rewrite would be more practical than a C#/Managed C++ rewrite, even with the help of LLMs.
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Windows 10 and their rolling release strategy also tried to rewrite the OS step by step and they failed. They have a huge problem with legacy code and it is totally unclear how to get out of it. I would not be surprise if they reconsider building a Linux distribution with an proprietary desktop and some other MS-only extras.
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It was totally the goal that was the problem! Who names their goal "North Star"? It sounds like a manager just read a historical romance audiobook and liked how it sounds.
Nobody navigates by the stars any more, it's an anachronism and references a skill that has been mostly forgotten by society. Worse, neologisms are simply a bad choice for job postings, just who do they think is going to search for a keyword that someone just made up? Unless you're looking for candidates who are fans of that audiobook, t
Re: It wasn't the goal that was the problem (Score:2)
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if executed correctly.
Common software engineering wisdom says that is very likely impossible at this project size or would take in the 100s of years. And AI would need to be magic to get around that. It is not.
What can be done is what Apple did: Take an existing far superior kernel and essentially put a wrapper around it.
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Common software engineering wisdom says that is very likely impossible at this project size or would take in the 100s of years. And AI would need to be magic to get around that. It is not.
What can be done is what Apple did: Take an existing far superior kernel and essentially put a wrapper around it.
I suspect the kernel is not where the problems are, but rather all that cruft that sits on top of the kernel, UI code, libraries, 'foundation classes', etc.
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At then you look at some performance numbers and realize the Win11 kernel is dog slow and consumes much more resources than needed and, on top of that (and this is the worst part for a rewrite), has a far, far too large API with tons of inconsistencies and bugs promoted to documented features. No argument about much more cruft on top of it, but a kernel is on the highest difficulty level known.
Just for kicks, the Win11 kernel is estimated at 70 Mega-loc. Putting that into the simple COCOMO gives you around
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The goal of replacing crappy C and C++ with Rust would be laudable, if executed correctly.
But therein lies the problem. While Rust won't fix a bad programmer, the kind of designs you get in crappy C and C++ code are basically impossible for the borrow checker to verify. This implies a much deeper refactoring which is slow and error prone.
Largest codebases? (Score:2)
So they are not rewriting Windows 11....but they are rewriting their largest codebases. So what are they rewriting (I've heard Outlook has more lines of code than Windows)?
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Of course (Score:2)
Everyone knows poop flinging monkeys are better!
Liars (Score:2)
Liars, except if Windows is not written in C/C++ already. Is it Visual Basic ? COBOL /
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The journalist Paul Thurrott is the one who lied. The quote is somewhat clear--that it's a personal goal--but the headline is a declaration about what Microsoft will do.
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The Windows code base is mostly C++, written in varying modernity and dialect dating from 1980s to 2020s. There is also use of C++ variants such as C++/WinRT and C++/CX for various built-in UWP applications and services. There is also some C# in the applications. There’s probably some plain C in specialised parts but I never encountered any. From what I’ve seen the median age of code by LOC is probably 10 years: a lot of new development but also lot of code that is stable and hasn’t change
Eliminate every line of C and C++ from Microsoft (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Or better yet, port the whole OS to run in a browser https://www.sevenforums.com/ne... [sevenforums.com] and then convert it to JavaScript (for speed)!
Such a surprise (Score:4, Interesting)
Trying this would have been new exalted heights of stupidity even for Microsoft.
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Maybe they've started to learn what their AI can't do?
do we know (Score:2)
that post seemed suss. (Score:2)
i am on the AI bandwagon (who wants to join the Button Guild?) but it seemed weird to announce that AI is going to rewrite the Windows Operating System top-to-bottom. as an AI user, i can say unequivocally that is impossible with today’s tech. you can’t point AI at something and say “go.” you still need to know your shit. currently, AI is only faster at typing than you are.
good on microsoft for quickly correcting this misinformation.
Unlikely - they will re-write in HTML5 (Score:2)
Its no mistake that everyone has to read between the lines because Microsoft is the least trustworthy IT company in the history of man..... sorry, I just got interrupted by an advertisement asking me to purchase a Microsoft subscription so it can help me finish writing this sentence. Where was I? Oh yes.....kind