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Microsoft denies rewriting Windows 11 in Rust using AI

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Re: Microsoft denies rewriting Windows 11 in Rust using AI

#11

Post by monocasa »

Tempest1981 wrote: post #4

> Our North Star is "1 engineer, 1 month, 1 million lines of code" Can someone explain this? Are they suggesting that (eventually) one engineer can produce 1 million lines of Rust code in a month? Or replace 1 million lines of C code? Using new "powerful code processing infrastructure"... but would it understand the semantics? Are those semantics clearly documented?

My read is Rewrite it in Rust™ for the whole MS native language codebase, but with AI doing the heavy lifting of the rewrite. Except the heavy part of the rewrite would be the review process, and I would hope they aren't trusting that to predominately ML.

Re: Microsoft denies rewriting Windows 11 in Rust using AI

#12

Post by charcircuit »

monocasa wrote: post #10
charcircuit wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>is pretty wild How is it wild? On social media I kept seeing things like people falsely expecting the end goal would require manually reading through a million lines of code. It seemed more like people making up reasons to be mad or trying to dunk on the author.

My read was rewriting one million lines of code per engineer month using ML to do the heavy lifting. Which is absolutely batshit. There's no way that can be reviewed properly, even if it's putting all of the review work on all of the other teams.

With this mindset I feel like you would also think bumping a C++ compiler toolchain version is impossible due to all the different changes to code generation that could happen. This is already done today and has similar issues where technically all the code can be affected, but it's not reviewed via a process of manually reading every line.

Re: Microsoft denies rewriting Windows 11 in Rust using AI

#14

Post by troglo-byte »

I think I would be more interested in Rust the language if Rust the PR sphere was not suggestive of certain all-powerful online influences that I've developed antibodies against. I'm not claiming that they're the same people that dig tunnels and launch satellites, just that my immune system is getting activated as if they were.

Re: Microsoft denies rewriting Windows 11 in Rust using AI

#15

Post by dchftcs »

monocasa wrote: post #10
charcircuit wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>is pretty wild How is it wild? On social media I kept seeing things like people falsely expecting the end goal would require manually reading through a million lines of code. It seemed more like people making up reasons to be mad or trying to dunk on the author.

My read was rewriting one million lines of code per engineer month using ML to do the heavy lifting. Which is absolutely batshit. There's no way that can be reviewed properly, even if it's putting all of the review work on all of the other teams.

At some point velocity will slow down too. Figuring out edge cases in production to add or subtract a few lines, or backtracking from a bad change.

Re: Microsoft denies rewriting Windows 11 in Rust using AI

#16

Post by monocasa »

charcircuit wrote: post #12
monocasa wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My read was rewriting one million lines of code per engineer month using ML to do the heavy lifting. Which is absolutely batshit. There's no way that can be reviewed properly, even if it's putting all of the review work on all of the other teams.

With this mindset I feel like you would also think bumping a C++ compiler toolchain version is impossible due to all the different changes to code generation that could happen. This is already done today and has similar issues where technically all the code can be affected, but it's not reviewed via a process of manually reading every line.

There's a nearly incalculable difference between bumping a compiler version and rewriting it in a different language.

Re: Microsoft denies rewriting Windows 11 in Rust using AI

#17

Post by tonyhart7 »

monocasa wrote: post #11
Tempest1981 wrote: post #4

> Our North Star is "1 engineer, 1 month, 1 million lines of code" Can someone explain this? Are they suggesting that (eventually) one engineer can produce 1 million lines of Rust code in a month? Or replace 1 million lines of C code? Using new "powerful code processing infrastructure"... but would it understand the semantics? Are those semantics clearly documented?

My read is Rewrite it in Rust™ for the whole MS native language codebase, but with AI doing the heavy lifting of the rewrite. Except the heavy part of the rewrite would be the review process, and I would hope they aren't trusting that to predominately ML.

they probably would using AI to review the code also, like cmon this is MS we talking about

Re: Microsoft denies rewriting Windows 11 in Rust using AI

#18

Post by charcircuit »

monocasa wrote: post #16
charcircuit wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With this mindset I feel like you would also think bumping a C++ compiler toolchain version is impossible due to all the different changes to code generation that could happen. This is already done today and has similar issues where technically all the code can be affected, but it's not reviewed via a process of manually reading every line.

There's a nearly incalculable difference between bumping a compiler version and rewriting it in a different language.

A C++ compiler translates C++ to an assembly. This project would translate C++ to another language. It's not that different of a concept.

Re: Microsoft denies rewriting Windows 11 in Rust using AI

#19

Post by Spooky23 »

marcodiego wrote: post #3

The simple fact that they have to deny it, meaning such an absurd is widely considered plausible, is already a sign of their reputation.

Have you used Microsoft software lately? After they fired the testing people a few years ago, the number of regressions I find at work is nuts.

Re: Microsoft denies rewriting Windows 11 in Rust using AI

#20

Post by monocasa »

hrdwdmrbl wrote: post #13
sva_ wrote: post #5

The original LinkedIn post is pretty wild. I wonder if he did a fat line of coke before writing that, or if it actually were any concrete plans that have been worked out.

As a goal for 2030, it doesn’t seem that wild. Shoot for the moon

Rewriting Microsoft's 10s if not 100s of millions of lines of native code in four years doesn't sound that wild to you?
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