“My goal is to eliminate every line of C and C++ from Microsoft by 2030.” These were the words shared in a LinkedIn post by Galen Hunt, a distinguished engineer at Microsoft. He added that Microsoft’s codebases would be replaced using a strategy that fuses algorithms and AI.
“We’ve built a powerful code processing infrastructure,” Hunt wrote. “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.”
Hunt’s post also mentioned an open position for a Principal Software Engineer who would help develop the tools Microsoft is building to achieve this goal.
The successful candidate would work within Microsoft’s ‘Future of Scalable Software Engineering’ group. Hunt says the team has a mission to “build capabilities to allow Microsoft and our customers to eliminate technical debt at scale.”
As part of this transformation, Microsoft plans to use Rust. It’s a memory-safe programming language. Rust uses strict compile-time checks and automated memory management to prevent common vulnerabilities such as out-of-bound reading and writing. Attackers often exploit these systems to gain control. In recent years, governments have called for the adoption of memory-safe languages, especially Rust, to improve software security.
Rust has been widely adopted across software projects, particularly in web services and systems programming. It has been extensively studied academically and has a growing community of developers.
Microsoft has increasingly turned to Rust to improve security and reliability. In 2022, Azure’s CTO called for Rust to become the default language for new projects. The company has since been developing tools to automatically convert portions of C code into Rust.
