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Microsoft seeks Rust developers to rewrite core C# code

theregister.com

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Re: Microsoft seeks Rust developers to rewrite core C# code

#31

Post by cebert »

Merad wrote: post #12
chiph wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect this is the .NET runtime + libraries, not applications written in C#.

No, they're looking at migrating some core Office 365 services to Rust. This is the job posting: https://jobs.careers.microsoft.com/global/en/job/1633482/Pri... At the scale of O365 it totally makes sense to look at a high performance non-GC language for your core systems that see the most traffic (I say this as a .Net dev).

Too bad you have to be in the office 50% of time for that role.

Re: Microsoft seeks Rust developers to rewrite core C# code

#32

Post by solarkraft »

Merad wrote: post #12
chiph wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect this is the .NET runtime + libraries, not applications written in C#.

No, they're looking at migrating some core Office 365 services to Rust. This is the job posting: https://jobs.careers.microsoft.com/global/en/job/1633482/Pri... At the scale of O365 it totally makes sense to look at a high performance non-GC language for your core systems that see the most traffic (I say this as a .Net dev).

That surprises me since I'd expect that you could get really far with hot path optimisation.

Re: Microsoft seeks Rust developers to rewrite core C# code

#33

Post by rockwotj »

mmastrac wrote: post #20

I love writing Rust, but I was really surprised by how difficult it was to find a job _actually_ writing Rust. I'm happy to see the increased activity in the space, but searching for a job in Rust is probably still 10x harder than C or C++. It worked out in the end, and I'm happy to be getting paid to be writing Rust every day, but I hope that the market for Rust jobs continues to grow -- ideally even faster than it…

On the reverse side of things, trying to find a C++ dev is usually harder than finding people who want to write Rust.

Re: Microsoft seeks Rust developers to rewrite core C# code

#34

Post by bobajeff »

I'm not totally sold on rust as a language but I have to admit the tooling and ecosystem is really nice. I'm noticing that I'm increasingly using more stuff built with it.

I'm also not sold on zig either for many of the same reasons. I prefer my low level languages to be smaller like c. I think that might be true for languages higher level languages too. I just don't like to have to down a lot of documentation on hundreds of different features and concepts behind them.

Re: Microsoft seeks Rust developers to rewrite core C# code

#35

Post by diego_moita »

mmastrac wrote: post #20

I love writing Rust, but I was really surprised by how difficult it was to find a job _actually_ writing Rust. I'm happy to see the increased activity in the space, but searching for a job in Rust is probably still 10x harder than C or C++. It worked out in the end, and I'm happy to be getting paid to be writing Rust every day, but I hope that the market for Rust jobs continues to grow -- ideally even faster than it…

Agree, I am still looking for a Rust position, although I have more than 3 years of experience with it.

And yes, it is very hard.

It seems Rust is in a chicken/egg position: employers avoid it because "there are few developers", developers avoid it because "there are few jobs".

Until recently the majority of Rust jobs were blockchain stuff. Now I see a rise in network infrastructure and security.

Re: Microsoft seeks Rust developers to rewrite core C# code

#36

Post by oldpersonintx »

mmastrac wrote: post #20

I love writing Rust, but I was really surprised by how difficult it was to find a job _actually_ writing Rust. I'm happy to see the increased activity in the space, but searching for a job in Rust is probably still 10x harder than C or C++. It worked out in the end, and I'm happy to be getting paid to be writing Rust every day, but I hope that the market for Rust jobs continues to grow -- ideally even faster than it…

[dead]

Re: Microsoft seeks Rust developers to rewrite core C# code

#37

Post by xedrac »

mmastrac wrote: post #20

I love writing Rust, but I was really surprised by how difficult it was to find a job _actually_ writing Rust. I'm happy to see the increased activity in the space, but searching for a job in Rust is probably still 10x harder than C or C++. It worked out in the end, and I'm happy to be getting paid to be writing Rust every day, but I hope that the market for Rust jobs continues to grow -- ideally even faster than it…

The trick is to introduce Rust wherever you're at, assuming it's a good fit for the task. This may be harder to do if you don't have enough influence.

Re: Microsoft seeks Rust developers to rewrite core C# code

#38

Post by CHY872 »

hgs3 wrote: post #11
dragonwriter wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C# doesn't have ownership/lifetimes and the kind of safety that comes with them. Also, at the scale of Microsoft’s core global services, when you are paying for the processing, fast enough (or “CPU efficient enough”) isn't the same as with common apps. Even small efficiency gains are going to yield sufficient savings to be worth a fair amount of developer time.

> C# doesn't have ownership/lifetimes and the kind of safety that comes with them. Could you elaborate? C# has a garbage collector for tracking resources.

C# has a garbage collector for specifically tracking memory, but lifetimes are more broadly useful.

For example, Rust lifetimes (this is also the case in C++ afaik) can be used to suitably scope the lifetimes of mutexes, to have temporary folders which are deleted when they go out of scope, to require that a connection pool is destroyed _after_ the last connection inside it is returned, etc, etc.

Mostly, garbage collected language do a bad job of cleaning up objects which refer to resources held elsewhere. Java had persistent issues with direct ByteBuffers (which were wrappers around malloc (but not free!)). Locks are easily held too long. File handles are easily left open. And depending on your GC settings, that file descriptor that's holding a 10GB file around may not get cleaned up for hours.

Refcounted languages can be somewhat better, but they don't avoid the bug, they just mitigate the effects.

Re: Microsoft seeks Rust developers to rewrite core C# code

#39

Post by xedrac »

fortran77 wrote: post #22
timeon wrote: post #2

I upvote almost any post "in Rust" here (yeah that's me) but this story went bit too far. It was just one job posting and so many sites acts like MS is going to ditch C#.

That’s funny because I downvote almost any “in Rust” post here! C# — and garbage collected languages in general — aren’t going anywhere. With the shift to Arm, languages compiled for a runtime interpreter will get even more important for Microsoft.

Given your username I suspect you're quite a bit older. I've mentored several grey beards on Rust and they weren't at all happy about it, at first. After a few months though, they were some of its strongest advocates. It's hard to not love Rust when you realize just how much pain it saves you from.

Re: Microsoft seeks Rust developers to rewrite core C# code

#40

Post by tialaramex »

marcosdumay wrote: post #18
gigatexal wrote: post #16

Why is MS so hyped on Rust? It’s good but doesn’t it have its caveats? It seems they’ve become Rust zealots.

> It’s good but doesn’t it have its caveats? Compared to C#, it's a low level language, where you have to be concerned with a lot of details. But then, I'd bet this is for replacing bad C# that does low level tasks, that nobody sane would write but MS pushed for anyway because they were hyping C#.

Office 365 is was introduced in 2010. So when it was created Microsoft had two reasonable options:

1. Accept the performance penalty from using a safe garbage collected language (such as their own C#) which is slower which may make the service less attractive and more resource hungry which means more expensive to run at scale.

2. Accept the correctness penalty from C++ which delivers good performance but will cause an endless stream of bugs, some very hard to diagnose.

Rust makes this much easier, because you aren't paying the correctness penalty, your Rust will probably have the same or fewer correctness bugs as your C#, and yet you get the good performance you'd have wanted from C++.

For a 2010 product Rust was not an option, but presumably at some point in the last say five years, Microsoft did the maths and worked out that unless they're killing Office 365 soon or somehow C++ magically becomes safe with no work, a transition to Rust is cost effective.

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