{"id":50632,"date":"2026-01-06T16:48:44","date_gmt":"2026-01-06T21:48:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=50632"},"modified":"2026-03-30T14:02:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T18:02:11","slug":"microsoft-rust-and-copilot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2026\/01\/06\/microsoft-rust-and-copilot\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft Rust and Copilot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thurrott.com\/dev\/330980\/microsoft-to-replace-all-c-c-code-with-rust-by-2030\">Paul Thurrott<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/developers.slashdot.org\/story\/25\/12\/23\/010200\/microsoft-to-replace-all-cc-code-with-rust-by-2030\">Slashdot<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/www.thurrott.com\/dev\/330980\/microsoft-to-replace-all-c-c-code-with-rust-by-2030\">\n<p>&ldquo;My goal is to eliminate every line of C and C++ from Microsoft by 2030,&rdquo; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/posts\/galenh_principal-software-engineer-coreai-microsoft-activity-7407863239289729024-WTzf\/\">Microsoft Distinguished Engineer Galen Hunt writes in a post on LinkedIn<\/a>. &ldquo;Our strategy is to combine AI <em>and<\/em> Algorithms to rewrite Microsoft&rsquo;s largest codebases. Our North Star is &lsquo;1 engineer, 1 month, 1 million lines of code.&rsquo; To accomplish this previously unimaginable task, we&rsquo;ve built a powerful code processing infrastructure. Our algorithmic infrastructure creates a scalable graph over source code at scale. Our AI processing infrastructure then enables us to apply AI agents, guided by algorithms, to make code modifications at scale. The core of this infrastructure is already operating at scale on problems such as code understanding.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.windowslatest.com\/2025\/12\/24\/microsoft-denies-rewriting-windows-11-using-ai-after-an-employees-one-engineer-one-month-one-million-code-post-on-linkedin-causes-outrage\/\">Mayank Parmar<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=46381813\">Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/www.windowslatest.com\/2025\/12\/24\/microsoft-denies-rewriting-windows-11-using-ai-after-an-employees-one-engineer-one-month-one-million-code-post-on-linkedin-causes-outrage\/\">\n<p>Microsoft told Windows Latest that the company does not plan to rewrite Windows 11 using AI in Rust, which is a programming language that is more secure than C and C++.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>I also screenshotted the LinkedIn post before it was edited out by the top-level Microsoft engineer[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Honestly, most people would not have taken this seriously if it did not come from a top-level Microsoft engineer. When someone with that kind of title and long history at the company talks about eliminating C and C++ and using AI to rewrite large codebases, it sounds less like a random idea and more like something Microsoft is at least exploring.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@Migueldeicaza\/115780873451780582\">Miguel de Icaza<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@Migueldeicaza\/115780873451780582\">\n<p>It bothers me that the clarification was not &ldquo;sorry I misled you&rdquo;, but &ldquo;you folks are dumb by parsing my words the way I wrote them&rdquo;<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Meanwhile, here&rsquo;s the actual <a href=\"https:\/\/www.office.com\">www.office.com<\/a> site matter-of-factly rebranding Office as Copilot (via <a href=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=46496465\">Hacker News<\/a>):<\/p>\n\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/www.office.com\"><p>The Microsoft 365 Copilot app (formerly Office) lets you create, share, and collaborate all in one place with your favorite apps now including Copilot.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2021\/04\/29\/rust-at-facebook\/\">Rust at Facebook<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2021\/04\/15\/rust-support-in-the-linux-kernel\/\">Rust Support in the Linux Kernel<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p id=\"microsoft-rust-and-copilot-update-2026-01-08\">Update (<a href=\"#microsoft-rust-and-copilot-update-2026-01-08\">2026-01-08<\/a>): <a href=\"https:\/\/take.surf\/2026\/01\/06\/the-hunt-for-midori\">Jesper<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/take.surf\/2026\/01\/06\/the-hunt-for-midori\">\n<p>Ignoring hype and corporate arrogance, having been conversant in .NET for a significant portion of my life, my thoughts go to <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Midori_%28operating_system%29\">Midori<\/a>. Midori was a legendary ground-up implementation of an operating system, object capability model and asynchronous programming in pure managed, memory-safe code that went as far as to power production code. It directly birthed the concepts behind <code>async<\/code> and <code>await<\/code>, which has now spread to pretty much every language in the decade since its introduction, as well as brought the concept of contiguous memory-safe slices, christened <code>Span&lt;T&gt;<\/code> to C# and .NET, where it now infiltrates all levels of the stack and brings down memory allocations and by extension garbage collection.<\/p>\n<p>I don&rsquo;t know what Mr Hunt is up to, but it does have the ring of a similar project.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>My hope is that this project, alongside the current effort to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=uDtMuS7BExE\">only allow new codebases in Rust in the Windows kernel<\/a>, helps push on the state of the art by trying to do what research projects do best - which is to start with an oft-absurd idea and then take it, over time, with purpose and still with connection to what the real world wants to accomplish, to a logical conclusion.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p id=\"microsoft-rust-and-copilot-update-2026-03-30\">Update (<a href=\"#microsoft-rust-and-copilot-update-2026-03-30\">2026-03-30<\/a>): <a href=\"https:\/\/mas.to\/@carnage4life\/116278591210938625\">Dare Obasanjo<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mas.to\/@carnage4life\/116278591210938625\">\n<p>I thought Microsoft&rsquo;s consumer version of Copilot was a flop but it seems the real concern is the business usage. Only 3.3% of Microsoft 365 customers have upgraded to paid versions of Copilot but that&rsquo;s not the bad news.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Paul Thurrott (Slashdot): &ldquo;My goal is to eliminate every line of C and C++ from Microsoft by 2030,&rdquo; Microsoft Distinguished Engineer Galen Hunt writes in a post on LinkedIn. &ldquo;Our strategy is to combine AI and Algorithms to rewrite Microsoft&rsquo;s largest codebases. Our North Star is &lsquo;1 engineer, 1 month, 1 million lines of code.&rsquo; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2026-01-06T21:48:48Z","apple_news_api_id":"61274022-9c74-4b57-b25b-014ff25338d5","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2026-03-30T18:02:15Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQ==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AYSdAIpx0S1eyWwFP8lM41Q","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1351,2717,37,577,71,408,2074],"class_list":["post-50632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-copilot-ai","tag-microsoft","tag-microsoft-office","tag-programming","tag-rust-lang","tag-software-rewrite"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50632"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51426,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50632\/revisions\/51426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}