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Rust is tier-1 language at Microsoft

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Re: Rust is tier-1 language at Microsoft

#121

Post by neutronicus »

isolay wrote: post #88
pdpi wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's two ways to approach this — build tooling for existing Rust developers to get them to adopt the Microsoft stack, or build tooling for existing Microsoft stack developers to get them to adopt Rust. I'd argue that the former is less important than the latter, and my understanding is that Visual Studio is still the IDE for Windows-centric development, so for those MS-first developers, Rust missing from VS means…

It would have to be the 2nd option. Who in their right mind would voluntarily choose Windows as their dev env? It will have to be those who are already there.

Visual Studio brings a lot to the table for C++ development. Specifically the Debugger, although IntelliSense also often succeeds at queries that stump clangd.

If they can replicate that capability, I think it can be a draw.

I was a mac / Linux guy before my current gig, but Visual Studio is so much more capable than XCode that I basically only use the Windows machine except to debug mac-specific issues. Less so, now, admittedly, that the malware scanner process is literally always pegging a CPU core.

Re: Rust is tier-1 language at Microsoft

#122

Post by gregw2 »

Those interested in this may find the following articles of interest:

Microsoft goals [edit: err, Microsoft hiring manager vision-casting goal ] to convert 1 billion lines of code to rust by 2030 via automated tooling enabling "1 engineer, 1 month, 1 million lines of code": https://thenewstack.io/microsofts-bold-goal-replace-1b-lines...

DARPA work towards automating converting C code to Rust using a mix of 6 different teams using different approaches: https://www.darpa.mil/research/programs/translating-all-c-to... Feb 2026 Progress report: https://github.com/DARPA-TRACTOR-Program/Reports/blob/main/F...

Re: Rust is tier-1 language at Microsoft

#123

Post by jcelerier »

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #42
mrec wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd also love to see MS sponsoring Windows support for a modern linker like mold or wild.

lld-link is already a big step up from link.exe. Although the latter has incremental linking, which none of the Unix-like linkers have.

to be fair mold or wild's full link is a few hundred times faster than a link.exe incremental relink

Re: Rust is tier-1 language at Microsoft

#125

Post by jeroenhd »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #2

So when will we get tier 1 debugging support in Visual Studio?

println!() already works, who needs more than that?

Kidding aside, VS Code has excellent debugging support already. Unless you need to share your Rust code base with a legacy C/C++ code base, I don't think VS is the best environment for Rust programming.

There are good use cases for staying within full-fat VS's capability set (drivers, among other things), but I don't think Microsoft needs to add Rust to VS in this much of a hurry.

Re: Rust is tier-1 language at Microsoft

#126

Post by tredre3 »

bluGill wrote: post #100
mr_00ff00 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question in terms of memory is, will vibe coded rust get around ownership issues by .clone()-ing everything. Maybe this has changed since I wrote Rust, but that was a classic beginner fix. Just throw memory at it.

The other things I've seen beginners do is throw unsafe at everything.

The things that unsafe enables are arbitrary pointers, FFI, and accessing union members in a C struct. It seems highly unlikely to me that unsafe would fix any beginner's problem.

.clone() on the other hand is indeed an easy/quick fix for a lot of issues you'd face when learning rust.

Re: Rust is tier-1 language at Microsoft

#127

Post by burakemir »

gregw2 wrote: post #122

Those interested in this may find the following articles of interest: Microsoft goals [edit: err, Microsoft hiring manager vision-casting goal ] to convert 1 billion lines of code to rust by 2030 via automated tooling enabling "1 engineer, 1 month, 1 million lines of code": https://thenewstack.io/microsofts-bold-goal-replace-1b-lines... DARPA work towards automating converting C code to Rust using a mix of 6 differen…

It would be possible for me to give a more nuanced take, but the upshot is: none of that shit is going to work 100%.

One may get local maxima like an unsafe bonanza, or something that introduces a custom runtime memory management discipline at the cost of performance etc. Fully equivalent C++ to Rust in full generality is mainly wishful thinking. Of course that does not mean one should not try it.

See also my other comment.

Re: Rust is tier-1 language at Microsoft

#128

Post by neutronicus »

CodeCompost wrote: post #90
cwbrandsma wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it is already supported in VS Code. I don't think this is a hot take, but I'm predicting Microsoft will gradually phase out Visual Studio in favor of VS Code.

Agreed but I think you need to pry Visual Studio from VB.NET developers' cold dead hands.

C++ developers, too. I suppose they're splitting out the real powerful stuff (Debugger, LSP) for VSCode's consumption.

Re: Rust is tier-1 language at Microsoft

#129

Post by superkuh »

I hope this kind of thing means Rust stops making so many rapid breaking changes in th compiler. I've tried it twice, once in early 2021 once 2025. Both times I tried to compile a few random projects I found on the web, stuff like a wordpress fanfic scraper, a software defined radio program, etc.

In 2021 my linux distro I was using had just been released 3 months prior but it's rustc already could not compile 2 of 3 projects due to the use of new features added to rustc in those 3 months. In the SDR case I knew the author and he was able to re-write it in more general rust code and it worked great. In 2025 my linux distro had been out for a couple years. None of the rust projects I tried would compile with my rustc.

Rust, in the past, seemed a very bleeding edge, move fast and break things community. I hope that with more people using it in more places the demographics change and people won't always target latest and greatest. A lifetime for the compiler of at least a few years would make it a very useable language. Adoption at microsoft might help this.

Re: Rust is tier-1 language at Microsoft

#130

Post by suddenlybananas »

tredre3 wrote: post #126
bluGill wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other things I've seen beginners do is throw unsafe at everything.

The things that unsafe enables are arbitrary pointers, FFI, and accessing union members in a C struct. It seems highly unlikely to me that unsafe would fix any beginner's problem. .clone() on the other hand is indeed an easy/quick fix for a lot of issues you'd face when learning rust.

I think beginner programmers are unlikely to use unsafe when learning rust but people coming from c or c++ who are beginners at rust might use unsafe all over the place.
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