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Rust is tier-1 language at Microsoft

rustfoundation.org

221–230 of 522 posts

Re: Rust is tier-1 language at Microsoft

#221
post #162

This makes strategic sense in multiple ways: 1. Rust's memory safety design will help Microsoft improve a gigantic portfolios of products that have been known to have lots of CVEs and 70% of them are memory safety issues, according to Azure CTO Mark Russinovich's talk at RustCon last year.[1] 2. Windows 11's forceful push to retire millions of legacy PC hardware by putting Windows 10 EOL last October was absurd for m…

I'm quite skeptical of rust usage leading to anything that helps consumers. Microsoft managed to add arbitrary code execution to Notepad. And it all points to a total disregard of the end-user, not lack of talent or capacity.

Re: Rust is tier-1 language at Microsoft

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's less because of what it's implemented in - and more to do with all the tracking and libraries they want to reuse... BigCo apps will take up lots of space and memory for BigCo reasons - obviously less if it's in Rust vs Go vs Python, but you could easily write Go apps that use far less memory than Rust apps written at BigCo due to BigCo reasons. It's just not really that much of a priority for them to have thei…

I've been having _a lot of fun_ writing Go apps that don't allocate anything and that use small, preallocated buffers to stream through requests/etc. Basically TigerStyle for Go. I don't use arenas, I just size everything for the worst case (or make the sizes configurable at startup) and still end up using much less memory. This is really only possible because I told Fable to build the underlying allocation-free HTTP…

> This has also been a lot less effort than writing Rust

I have never written such Go, but as an experienced Rust programmer I can tell you Rust is not hard to write after learning it. Learning it can take more time than usual (although there is also contrary evidence, e.g. from Google) but after you're used to it, you're basically as proficient as in other languages, except some glitches (that can be expensive - rewriting your main structure, but are fortunately rare). Considering the effort involved in coding in such unnatural Go variant, I tend to believe it is far easier to code in Rust (including coding in Rust using this style, since it is more suited to it).

Of course, if you're just vibe coding everything, maybe it is easier because maybe the LLMs write such Go better that they write Rust. But if you're not, even if you're only reviewing the code, I believe it's easier to review Rust code than to review such Go code (and potentially than reviewing any Go code, but that is a different matter).

Re: Rust is tier-1 language at Microsoft

#223

This is from rustconf. A lot of the focus at Rustconf this year has been C++ interop, Python Interop, Javascript interop -- it's no longer about "rewrite it in rust", it's about being part of the ecosystem.

Good. As a C+++ programmer Rust has some things that intrigue me. However I have no desire to rewrite everything in rust and so interoperability has been what is holding me back. We rewrote everything a few years back, completing in 2014 (Rust 1.0 came in 2015) - it costs nearly a billion dollars! I cannot in good conscience go back to management and ask for another billion dollars to rewrite again (Rust might be mor…

What were you working on that cost a billion dollars to rewrite? Or was that hyperbole?

Re: Rust is tier-1 language at Microsoft

#224
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most people don't have a choice. Corporate IT has choosen what I run my machine on. I have used a native linux machine, but since my email is still on outlook, everybody uses teams, and all the non-code documents are on windows I end up having to have a windows machine. Linux in a VM under windows ends up being the easiest workflow (though I'm just starting to try WSL and so far it is looking good)

Outlook and Teams are both web apps, or at least they were when I last used them. Even if you download the "native" app it's just Electron. I haven't had trouble using either of them on Linux.

Re: Rust is tier-1 language at Microsoft

#225
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This kind of stuff is why its hard to have good conversations about tooling. Windows is the best place for many kinds of software dev, but perhaps not the kind you are doing.

When it is not the mandated option, under what circumstances is Windows the best choice for software dev? The only domain I can think of is gaming, and Valve is seemingly coming up fast to eat Microsoft's lunch in the next few years.

Re: Rust is tier-1 language at Microsoft

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://github.com/luser/keep-calm-and-call-clone "Keep calm and call clone" is a good strategy for getting things working. Don't prematurely optimize code until you know it's the bottleneck.

There's premature optimisation, where you write a whole bunch of complicated code to avoid cloning an Arc . And then there's "premature optimisation" where you skip any consideration for performance until it becomes a problem. The latter is usually what people who use the quote "premature optimisation is the root of all evil" think it means. Don't just keep calm and clone, consider what you're cloning and why, and th…

"Keep calm and clone" is a good advice for beginners. Then it is also a good advice for experts - because when you're an expert and you just think of cloning, that probably means it is easier than borrowing which you would default to.

Re: Rust is tier-1 language at Microsoft

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically, it joins a list of existing Tier 1 languages (C++, C#, and TypeScript), as "one of the best-supported languages for internal development at Microsoft"

Java and Python are not on that list?

Microsoft explicitly de-emphasized Java in favor of C# after their J++ lawsuit. That's why they created C# in fact.

Python for windows application development never really got there and is kind of a technically runs if you want to run python kind of situation.

Re: Rust is tier-1 language at Microsoft

#228
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought it got pushed back out? Wasn't there a big drama about this and Linus weighed in? Linus is a wise operator at this point. I often see him come in like a hammer to bash down squabbling, but then he allows the situation to evolve once things quiet down. I only saw the hammer so I'm not sure what the current state is now.

Where did you hear that it got pushed back out? It's going strong as far as I can tell.

I was thinking of the public clash in 2025 between Christoph Hellwig which lead to the resignation of Hector Martin, lead of the Asahi Linux project.

It looks like later, in December 2025, Rust was officially moved from experimental to official: https://lwn.net/Articles/1049831/

Re: Rust is tier-1 language at Microsoft

#229
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good. As a C+++ programmer Rust has some things that intrigue me. However I have no desire to rewrite everything in rust and so interoperability has been what is holding me back. We rewrote everything a few years back, completing in 2014 (Rust 1.0 came in 2015) - it costs nearly a billion dollars! I cannot in good conscience go back to management and ask for another billion dollars to rewrite again (Rust might be mor…

What were you working on that cost a billion dollars to rewrite? Or was that hyperbole?

Real numbers. I can't say what directly, but you can make a good guess if you read my comment history. (I don't think this would be worth your time, but you could)

Re: Rust is tier-1 language at Microsoft

#230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rust 1.0 was in 2015. Most of these languages you're thinking of out of the Handmade Community didn't even start development until around the point Rust 1.0 shipped. In theory Odin 2027, the 1.0 release of Bill's Odin language, is scheduled for, as the name suggests, early 2027. Zig does not have an announced 1.0 schedule, and who knows for the other two famous Handmade languages. From the rash of "C++ successor" lan…

To Odin's credit, it is used for production software that _isn't_ a toy (by the language's own authors). It is probably 1.0 quality already.

Zig too. But this is far from being mainstream. Rust took around 5 years I think to become accepted in major companies, and those languages are harder to justify.
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