17 ms·

Rust is tier-1 language at Microsoft

726 points by mmastrac 22d ago

ComputerGuru 22d ago
So when will we get tier 1 debugging support in Visual Studio?
- pjmlp 22d ago
  You have it already on VSCode, which isn't quite the same, however nowadays it is an open question which one is more relevant for Microsoft's management, especially given that VS isn't cross platform (see Azure), and is stuck with WPF/.NET Framework.
- mrec 22d ago
  I'd also love to see MS sponsoring Windows support for a modern linker like mold or wild.
  - delta_p_delta_x 22d ago
    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.
    - jcelerier 22d ago
      to be fair mold or wild's full link is a few hundred times faster than a link.exe incremental relink
- flohofwoe 22d ago
  Optimistic to assume that modern day programmers even know what a debugger is, or if they do, consider it as anything else than some weird ancient shibboleth only used by the greybeards ;)
  - rafaelmn 22d ago
    Debugger MCP better
    - a012 22d ago
      It’s all /skills now
    - josephg 22d ago
      But of a tangent but I think cognitive skills are starting to become like physical skills. If we don’t move our bodies, we waste away physically. If we don’t do hard cognitive work sometimes - like writing and debugging code - I worry our minds will atrophy. I don’t have a problem with cars. But walking is still good for us.
      - bluGill 22d ago
        Try, but what skills are work keeping? We need something cogntive, but not everything. I know a few people who blacksmith as a hobby (often for the physical exercise as much as the work), but most people are happy not knowing how to do that job. I know how to set the air-fuel ratio on a gas engine, but I'm glad I don't need to tweak those parameters while driving (unlike a 1910s car where you did), and I won't miss oil changes on my cars as I move to electric.
        lelanthran 22d ago
        > Try, but what skills are work keeping? We need something cogntive, but not everything. Are you trying to be funny?
        bluGill 22d ago
        Work should be worth. I'm not sure if that is me or autocorrect.
        lelanthran 21d ago
- dethswatch 22d ago
  RustRover, my friend.
  - throwaway85825 22d ago
    I thought rover forced you to use their horrible new UI?
    - dethswatch 21d ago
      I've been using it since ~23 without any issues, the ui's have all been similar to Borland's stuff since the beginning.
- jeroenhd 22d ago
  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.
- thrwaway73637 22d ago
  u dont debug rust mate if it compiles it works
- MaulingMonkey 22d ago
  IDK about "tier 1" but I'll note I've used VS for debugging and profiling Rust binaries. I even wrote a tool to auto-generate a wrapper .sln so I can easily launch from VS: https://github.com/MaulingMonkey/cargo-vs https://github.com/MaulingMonkey/cargo-vs The main pain point IME was poor debugger visualizers for standard containers and enums. I fixed some of that for the standard containers by writing some natvis files for std: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues?q=state%3Aclosed%20is%3Apr%20author%3AMaulingMonkey https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues?q=state%3Aclosed%20... . Admittedly, they broke a few times. They also weren't automatically included in the pdbs, so I wrote a crate for that: https://github.com/MaulingMonkey/natvis-pdbs https://github.com/MaulingMonkey/natvis-pdbs . And then someone crated and stabilized #[debugger_visualizer] for rust itself, which can do the same job: https://doc.rust-lang.org/reference/attributes/debugger.html https://doc.rust-lang.org/reference/attributes/debugger.html . (...I should check on enum visualization, but I suspect it's still poor.)
- uncle_kostya 21d ago
  Works already in Visual Studio Code, even seamlessly between C++ and Rust
pjmlp 22d ago
This is very big news, all major OS vendors that also have a role in C and C++ language tooling, now have diversified their options in systems programming languages for greenfield development. Additionally we finally get some public news about the MSVC integration rumors regarding Rust.
- ghostly_s 22d ago
  Are you thinking this augurs more interoperability features in C?
  - pjmlp 22d ago
    Why should it? COM and WinRT (basically COM Next) are the way to do cross language Interoperability in Windows since VB 5 replaced VBX with OCX, it was a key feature in .NET Framework design, and revamped on Windows 8, when WinRT was introduced as the original design for .NET (Ext-VOS). https://arstechnica.com/features/2012/10/windows-8-and-winrt-everything-old-is-new-again https://arstechnica.com/features/2012/10/windows-8-and-winrt... See windows-rs crate.
- hn_submit 21d ago
  I'm totally disgusted that my Visual Studio 2022 instance uses 2 Gigabytes (!!) of RAM to run. What the hell is it doing that it's using that kind of memory? How about those morons solving that first before moving towards Rust. An IDE shouldn't have to use more than a 100MB of RAM tops. Anything more is inexcusable or needs a detailed explanation. BTW Firefox uses 1.1GB RAM so it's not immune from criticism either.
  - pjmlp 21d ago
    The complaint can be applied to any modern software, unfortunately.
    - vintagedave 21d ago
      You're right, though I'm not sure about all modern software quite to that extent. VS does have a reputation for being bloated. Even startup is not super fast IMO. I checked just now. A recent Delphi with a project open: 175-200MB. Water (our IDE, I work at RemObjects) about 300MB.
_joel 22d ago
Site down, maybe they need port it to use Rust... They use wordpress
- echelon 22d ago
  A lot of infrastructure is going to be ported to Rust. It's fantastic for websites and servers, and LLMs are very good at generating it. The primary downside of Rust is the long compile times, especially with macros (serde, etc.) If that can be fixed, it will be sublime.
  - deleted 22d ago
    [deleted]
  - tonyedgecombe 22d ago
    I like Rust a lot but I'm not sure it would come very high up my list for web applications.
    - echelon 22d ago
      Axum and Actix are phenomenal web frameworks. The type system and error handling ergonomics make it easier to write defect-free code than, say, Go or Java. Simple servers are request scoped and mostly feature linear request handling, so you're writing simple vanilla Rust without the complex pointer semantics that you would use for systems programming. The async pieces aren't difficult either. Serde-annotated structs are the best serialization/deserialization story anywhere. It integrates super ergonomically into Axum and Actix to make writing request handlers a breeze. They're super easy to read, too.
      - germandiago 22d ago
        > Axum and Actix are phenomenal web frameworks Compared to what? I see ASP.NET Core and Quarkus very competitive. The virtual threads in Java are great, paired with structured concurrency IMHO. If I have to go microservice or API, I would choose FastAPI for fastest delivery and if I have to rewrite, Go, unless it is massive scale and scaling horizontally becomes a headache I would not consider Rust/C++ for this. All the backend, etc. for the company I have been working for is C++ for the fast parts but all tools around are Python (with NiceGUI and Flask mostly). I think the combination is quite powerful, btw.
DidntUseIt 22d ago
Link doesn’t work. What’s a Tier 1 language?
- gshubert17 22d ago
  (Link worked for me ...) This “Tier-1 language” engineering status for Rust means giving internal teams a paved path from local development to production: secure toolchain builds, productive developer tooling, quality workflows, deep platform integration, and compliance with the SDL requirements Microsoft software must meet.
  - swiftcoder 22d ago
    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"
    - theanonymousone 22d ago
      Java and Python are not on that list?
      - monocasa 22d ago
        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.
- meindnoch 22d ago
  Tier 1 is the summit of summits - the summum bonum of languages, the highest order to which a language can aspire. Very few ever attain it. Non multa, sed multum: not many, but only those of extraordinary quality. Most languages remain forever in Tier 3, never passing beyond its gates. Of these, scarcely 1% ascend to Tier 2. And from that already distinguished company, a mere 0.1% possess the refinement, depth, and excellence required to cross the final threshold into Tier 1. Consider what that means: Tier 1 represents roughly the top 0.001% of languages. Pauci sed electi - few, but chosen. The crème de la crème. The aristocracy of languages. Primus inter pares, yet standing at the very edge of what programming language greatness can be. Ad astra per aspera. Through hardship, to the stars. Tier 1 is not merely another rank: it is the ultima Thule, the farthest frontier, the crown, the apotheosis.
LazyIDE 22d ago
[flagged]
calvbak 22d ago
This is great! Hope this trend will continue in the future; using a memory-safe language should be a top priority imo in context of the coming rogue AI swarms.
swiftcoder 22d ago
I guess the big question is whether they are going to open up rustc_codegen_utc for use outside of Microsoft?
- afdbcreid 22d ago
  They responded in the Zulip threads that yes, this is the plan, although they don't know if and what things will be open-source yet.
meerita 22d ago
Good news they adopted Rust as Tier-1 language. I hope their Weather app stop consuming more than 1GB RAM https://www.notebookcheck.net/Windows-11-s-built-in-Weather-app-wastes-more-than-1-GB-of-RAM.1364205.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Windows-11-s-built-in-Weather-...
- geodel 22d ago
  But Tier-1 app consuming Tier-1 RAM seems officially approved.
- pjmlp 22d ago
  The problem is the Webview2 prevalence, and note many Rust projects love their webviews as well.
  - airstrike 21d ago
    Not the ones made with iced <3
    - pjmlp 21d ago
      Yeah, however there are probably much more using Tauri.
- Verdex 22d ago
  I feel like the weather app makes a lot of sense from a corporate politics point of view. A 1mb weather app would have a significantly less impressive pie chart associated with it come "here are our improvements" presentation. Also if times get tough and you're told to reduce headcount by 10%, who do you want to get rid of. Sally who knows the USB driver end to end or Todd who wrote the bloated 1gb weather app. (Don't feel bad for Todd, he knew what he was getting himself into.)
  - Escapado 22d ago
    Did Todd just know or did his PO tell him to add telemetry tool number 24 while he was protesting and begged to be allowed to migrate to a newer rendering library but got shot down promptly because "KPI line must go up"? :)
the__alchemist 22d ago
With certain rough edges like complex traits and Async aside, rust is an S-tier lang in several domains. Of interest: - Embedded - PC desktop applications - Computationally-intense scientific programming. (Chem, structural bio etc) - OSes, drivers etc - High-performance tasks in general. CPU, GPU, etc. It's not a memory-safety one-trick pony; it's a well-rounded lang which has learned from its predecessors.
- varjag 22d ago
  Calculate ackermann(4,4), make no mistakes.
- bigfishrunning 22d ago
  Honestly, the only domains that I think rust isn't suitable for are: * rapid-prototyping, where javascript and python are still top-tier * adding scriptability to existing programs, where lua and scheme (and python) are popular * Server-side API implementation (rust is usable here, but I think Go fits the slot better)
  - edukite 22d ago
    My employer company go through JavaScript, Java, Golang and at the end landed on Rust for srver side and don't want to change anything. Everything is Rust now, regardless of traffic. I don't know why you think it's only usable but this is your right.
    - bigfishrunning 22d ago
      I do think rust works there (as you clearly know), i just like Go's ergonomics for that exact task better, that's all.
  - bryanlarsen 22d ago
    Rust is great for rapid protoyping, IMO. Or, at least the subset of rapid prototyping that involves massive rewrites to try out different approaches. Rust has a saying "if it compiles, it works", the compiler really ensures that you don't miss something when doing that rewrite.
js8 22d ago
Is Microsoft still trying to embrace, extend, extinguish Netscape after all those years? :-)
- boredatoms 22d ago
  I guess we should watch for contributions to Servo
- layer8 22d ago
  You’ll know when they publish Visual R++ or Rust.NET.
  - paulluuk 22d ago
    Don't forget about R#
    - layer8 22d ago
      I was originally going to write that, but R# already exists: https://rsharp.net/ https://rsharp.net/ (based on https://www.r-project.org/ https://www.r-project.org/)
      - delta_p_delta_x 22d ago
        Not to be confused with the other R#, which is ReSharper. https://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/ https://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/
  - SSLy 22d ago
    you jest but F# already does the ocamlness of Rust, no? and you don't need a borrow checker.
    - layer8 22d ago
      For tracking ownership of non-memory resources you still need something like that.
mtgh2s 22d ago
You gotta have balls or be receiving tons of money to publicly celebrate the sloppiest software company of the decade making your programming language Tier 1 internally.
- nazgulsenpai 22d ago
  Probably the fact they're a $3.7tn company has something to do with it.
pornel 22d ago
The big news here is they've replaced LLVM with MSVC's backend.
- booi 22d ago
  I'm sure that's a requirement for being a "Tier-1" language.
  - monocasa 21d ago
    Eh, they call TypeScript a tier 1 language too.
- dartharva 21d ago
  MSVC always was the default backend for Windows platforms.
  - qalmakka 21d ago
    Codegen was still done via LLVM. LLVM supports the MSVC _runtime_, here they're talking about using their (arguably worse) backend directly to generate code and do optimisations
- qalmakka 21d ago
  ... but why? The MSVC backend has been falling far behind LLVM with every release. I understand they want uniformity but IMHO either they catch up or they switch fully to LLVM, if they can
  - pjmlp 21d ago
    Windows ecosystem, and all those things MSVC backend can do and LLVM does not. For the same reason a Rust frontend is being developed for GCC.
    - LtWorf 21d ago
      What are these things?
mgaunard 22d ago
does it mean there is a rust.net?
- dralley 22d ago
  There is a rustc_codegen_clr which transpiles to .NET https://github.com/fractalfir/rustc_codegen_clr https://github.com/fractalfir/rustc_codegen_clr
  - mgaunard 22d ago
    > This project is still early in its developement. Bugs, crashes and miscompilations are expected. DO NOT USE IT FOR ANYTHING SERIOUS. how can one claim it is tier-1? Also random student, nothing official from Microsoft.
    - pali6 22d ago
      That project is not in any direct way related to Microsoft
    - debugnik 22d ago
      We thought your Rust.NET comment was somewhat in jest. No, Microsoft isn't porting Rust to .NET, they barely try to support anything other than C# on it nowadays, but the article mentions an internal adapter for MSVC codegen. The project linked above has been posted to HN in the past a few times though.
- DidntUseIt 22d ago
  Just had a PTSD flashback... The year was 2002, VB6 had just been retired for VB.NET which had 0 backward compatibility. And then we all became Flash/AS3 developers. The End
  - 4petesake 21d ago
    Cold Fusion 1,000 mile gaze says hello
petilon 22d ago
If it is a tier-1 language why isn't it supported in Visual Studio?
- brunoborges 22d ago
  Because it takes time. Even with coding agents, to add the capability. Then, there is the question on whether Rust developers who like to engage with Microsoft tools, would really consider Visual Studio as their IDE, instead of something like VS Code, VS Code Agent Mode, GitHub Copilot App, or GitHub Copilot CLI with simpler editors. I'd be curious to know whether Rust developers believe Visual Studio is the right place for Microsoft to invest Rust specific coding capabilities.
  - not_a9 22d ago
    Visual Studio does have a really nice C++ debugger - one would imagine the C++ debugging capabilities should translate to Rust.
    - pjmlp 21d ago
      Hot code reloading, and incremental linking would be great, given the build times.
      - deleted 21d ago
        [deleted]
  - pdpi 22d ago
    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 Rust is poorly supported, end of story.
    - 22d ago
macleginn 22d ago
The text is mostly about rustc_codegen_utc; maybe this should be reflected in the title? Also the use of italics there is rather jarring.
larodi 22d ago
ermm... which are the rust-native libs which enable winrt3.0 native apps?
- tcfhgj 22d ago
  Do you mean winui3? windows-rs
  - larodi 21d ago
    winui3, yes. but afaik windows-rs is the generic crate, right? not something ms released as rust-first approach to winui3?
    - tcfhgj 21d ago
      It includes Windows Reactor, a fairly new API for WinUI Apps
this_user 22d ago
Now their broken slop code is at least memory safe.
- ArsenDjukic 22d ago
  [dead]
e4m2 22d ago
From the linked Zulip thread (https://rust-lang.zulipchat.com/#narrow/channel/131828-t-compiler/topic/rustc-codegen-utc/near/623181597 https://rust-lang.zulipchat.com/#narrow/channel/131828-t-com...): > We are running different workloads including rustc perf suite. In general the runtime performance is on par with llvm. Not what I would've expected!
bryanlarsen 22d ago
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.
- bluGill 22d ago
  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 more productive, but inflation will eat that up, so I expect a rewrite to be more expensive). If Rust can work with my existing code though - I know of a number of small places where there is reason to rewrite anyway because the code is bad (or sometimes was good but not nicely flexible for the features we have added since).
  - deleted 22d ago
    [deleted]
  - tyre 22d ago
    What were you working on that cost a billion dollars to rewrite? Or was that hyperbole?
    - bluGill 22d ago
      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)
      - redox99 22d ago
        Btw grok found out in less than ten seconds what place you refer to and likely what software within that company. Things that wouldn't be worth your time before are trivial these days with LLMs.
VimEscapeArtist 22d ago
M$ choosing Rust might be the strongest argument for picking Go instead
- germandiago 22d ago
  They strike different balances. Rust is absolute performance, similar to C++. Go is deliver fast and get a very good performance to effort ratio.
  - VimEscapeArtist 22d ago
    It was meant as sarcasm, but judging by the downvotes, I clearly didn’t land it :)
cnrcode 22d ago
[dead]
KingOfCoders 22d ago
Fable migrated a Go/Wails project for me to Rust/GPUI and it's so much faster, there is the possibility of Rust to gobble up many more projects.
Surac 22d ago
I remember an other 1 tier language ms once had. Anyone remember Visual-J? On the other hand if we could code in rust and get windows.forms as a ui it might make sense. MS is burning UI layer faster than one can train on
Colegno 22d ago
Being technically approved by Microsoft is not a proof of quality...
- afdbcreid 22d ago
  It could as well be the opposite, but Rust does not need a proof of quality today, certainly not from Microsoft. Still, becoming Tier 1 in major trillion-dollar corporations (Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and I know Google also has efforts in that direction) is something.
  - bryanlarsen 22d ago
    Google announced that Android contains 5 million lines of Rust last year; sounds Tier-1 to me.
    - afdbcreid 22d ago
      Android is a bit special inside Google (also Chromium). They are managed outside the main monorepo (google3) and their policies are different. From what people inside Google have told me, they do want to introduce Rust into google3 but that work has only begun.
      - kccqzy 22d ago
        They wasted a few years trying to introduce Swift then Carbon because they thought the Rust C++ interop wasn’t good enough.
FrustratedMonky 22d ago
As much as I like Rust. Still sad that F# didn't get this much support from their own mother.
HPsquared 22d ago
Visual Rust sounds like a defect but I'm looking forward to it.
burakemir 22d ago
Congrats to the folks involved! Having previously led Rust at Google, I remember several great cross-company discussions with Microsoft engineers on interop. Companies with massive C++ codebases use Rust as a pragmatic hedge. C++ as we know it is unlikely to ever become fully memory safe, and unlike C++ standard committee voices who dispute the urgency, major industry players need actionable solutions today. Because these existing codebases are so vast, Rust must have a viable C++ interop story. However, defining what "good interop" means remains tricky. C++ routinely tolerates aliasing and relies on patterns that violate Rust's aliasing rules. Shared backend infrastructure (like connecting rustc directly to MSVC backends) helps with ABI layout, cross-language inlining, and toolchain parity, but it doesn't solve the core type system divergence. The fundamental obstacle is type systems: * Boundaries remain unsafe: Compilers cannot statically verify C++ safety invariants. Crossing the boundary stays in unsafe territory. * Idiomatic C++ structures often cannot map cleanly into Rust idioms. This forces developers into onerous safety comments or heavy wrapper layers. At some point, application writers will consider serialization / in-process RPC or a full rewrite as a cheaper or cleaner option of getting interop. Bridging this gap on the ABI level is pragmatic, but pushing Rust's semantics to accommodate C++ edge cases risks compromising "pure Rust" goals. I doubt the broader Rust community will favor complicating Rust's safety model just to smooth over legacy C++ patterns. To be clear: practical interop is a worthwhile investment, but "seamless interop" needs serious qualification. It will always have hard limits. There will always be friction at the boundary and it will always be a tough sell.
ellyagg 22d ago
While literally true, the phrasing of this title will certainly and (IMO) purposefully confuse some headline scanners vs: “Rust Is a Tier-1 Language at Microsoft”.
gregw2 22d ago
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-of-c-c-with-rust/ 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-rust https://www.darpa.mil/research/programs/translating-all-c-to... Feb 2026 Progress report: https://github.com/DARPA-TRACTOR-Program/Reports/blob/main/First_TRACTOR_Evaluation_Report.pdf https://github.com/DARPA-TRACTOR-Program/Reports/blob/main/F...
- burakemir 22d ago
  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.
  - gregw2 22d ago
    Oh, I 100% agree. The question is how much you can reduce the effort of the port/migration, and in particular the validation effort. I've worked on projects where the core bits of code were "90%" converted by some automated tool, and in my view the overall benefit to the project timeline was probably only 20-30% because of the Amdahl's-law-type overheads of validation and bits of code not supported by the automation/conversion process. Nice, but no silver bullet. Non-idiomatic porting also isn't super-helpful if the resulting code isn't maintainable.
  - mkehrt 22d ago
    As I pointed out in a sibling comment, the plan isn't for it to work. This is a job posting for a researcher at MSR to investigate what it might look like someday.
superkuh 22d ago
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.
- 0x457 22d ago
  You can compile any old code with newer rustc as long as old project does not use unstable features that have changed/went away. What are you on? I recently recompiled project from 2015 with latest stable rust just fine. All breaking changesin rust done via editions and you can mix-and-match editions.
  - estebank 22d ago
    I suspect GP is using system rustc to build random projects off of github and doesn't use one of the distros that actually updates rustc, like Fedora, SuSE or Arch. Then the conversation is about forward compatibility, whether developers should wait X amount of time before using new std APIs or features, and whether the ease of using rustup and project expectation of it being accessible is reasonable or not.
    - 0x457 21d ago
      Well, "core" community projects have pretty decent MSRV for forward compatibility.
- 22d ago
adikshatriyag 22d ago
crazy i like that
axus 22d ago
I love how World of Warcraft "gear tier" jargon has expanded into the rest of the world. Pre-Y2K, the pseudo-formal usage of "tier-N" wasn't widespread in the US.
- minimaxir 22d ago
  In World of Warcraft, gear tier is an ordinal representing the raid tier the gear was made accessible in, not an indication of its importance/power.
rererereferred 22d ago
But which GUI toolkit will they use for all their new rust applications?
- tcfhgj 22d ago
  WinUI (3) via Windows Reactor
i2talics 22d ago
I hope announcements like this show that Rust is not a fledgling little language that moves fast and breaks things anymore. It's a mature, serious competitor to well established languages like C++ and C#. This is particularly important when trying to compare the experience of using Rust to other languages in the "better C/C++" space like Zig and Odin -- these are much newer and have more rough edges than Rust.
- tialaramex 22d ago
  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" languages a few years ago, Carbon is still being worked on, Herb Sutter's "Cpp2" seems dead or at least in a coma, Hylo is probably also in a coma, it has several "Write this text" type blog posts, dated 2025 for example...
  - hiccuphippo 22d ago
    > other two famous Handmade languages Jai and... C3? FilC?
    - tialaramex 21d ago
      Jai and C3. I do not consider FilC to be a distinct programming language. AIUI the C I wrote twenty years ago would work with Filip's approach, maybe it needs minor tweaks in a few cases (mmap stunts for example) but likely not for much of what I wrote.
  - zamalek 22d ago
    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.
m3kw9 22d ago
Good, C# is one of the worst languages there is, hopefully they turn it in to tier 18
devy 22d ago
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 millions of consumers and businesses. I was literrally helping a S&B having to replace the entire fleet of working PCs simply because Windows 10 of EOL and Windows 11 refused to run on those legacy hardware. Quite honestly those PCs ran just fine! That's why some has been migrated to Linux, in particular to Google's ChromeOS Flex.[2] 3. RAM shortage due to AI boom exhausted the memory chip manufacturers' production pipepline for at least the next 5 years. This means the mainstream PCs sold today will actually have a diminishing RAM size configurations than last year's in order for the PC manufacturers to not drastically raise the product price (or raise prices drastically for high RAM configurations like Apple does). This requires the Windows 11 operating system to be more conservative about RAM usage, Rust can be a part of that. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDtMuS7BExE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDtMuS7BExE [2] https://chromeos.google/products/chromeos-flex/ https://chromeos.google/products/chromeos-flex/
- MarleTangible 22d ago
  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.
  - throwaway2037 21d ago
    > Microsoft managed to add arbitrary code execution to Notepad. You write as though this was an intentional feature. Not, it was a CVE. I had to Google about it. For anyone else who didn't know about this CVE: "Microsoft added Markdown (.md) support and interactive hyperlink parsing to the modern Windows 11 version of Notepad. Improper validation of links meant that clicking a crafted hyperlink inside a Markdown file could cause Notepad to launch unverified protocol handlers without proper warnings." This CVE has already been patched. > And it all points to a total disregard of the end-user I don't understand this part. Are you trying to say that because they had a security flaw in a new feature that this demonstrates "total disregard of the end-user"? It seems like quite a reach.
bitwize 22d ago
NT kernel rewrite when?
dismalaf 22d ago
If I were the Rust foundation I'd be keeping this to myself right now.
- smcin 21d ago
  Why?
stevetron 22d ago
So, Rust.NET?
- 4petesake 21d ago
  VisualRust.NET Copilot
guywithahat 22d ago
It’s cool to see rust join C++, C#, and typescript as primary engineering languages. Confusingly there are no tier 2 or 3 languages, just tier 1 at Microsoft
abbefaria27 22d ago
What’s the story for Rust-C++ interoperability these days? That’s what kills adoption. Most C++ devs I know like the idea of Rust, but no one is going to go rewrite 30 years of working code. It needs to be something you can incorporate gradually.
- drop_star 22d ago
  ya our codebase is 30m lines of c++
- afdbcreid 22d ago
  There's an interop initiative by the Rust Foundation, there is a project goal to map the problem space, there was an effort to introduce an attribute (`#[rustc_splat]`) to allow calling overloaded functions, and there are various community-generated tools for more or less automated bindings generation.
- kibwen 22d ago
  Rust's raison d'être is to improve the confidence of the security-critical parts of your system. You don't need to rewrite all 30M lines of code to benefit from it, you just need to identify the 1% of your codebase with the greatest attack surface (e.g. any internet-facing string parser), cordon that part of the codebase off with a C ABI, and then convert that part to Rust. This is similar to how Firefox incorporates bits of Rust into its own C++ codebase over time (e.g. for parsing URLs).
- nicoburns 22d ago
  There's a huge push for this from the big companies adopting Rust. Google has been developing https://github.com/google/crubit https://github.com/google/crubit. The older cbdingen is still usable if more limited (it's what Firefox uses for some pretty involved interop).
- estebank 21d ago
  You might want to take a look at https://github.com/hkalbasi/zngur https://github.com/hkalbasi/zngur Calling Rust from C++ seems to be more technically straightforward than the reverse.
stillpointlab 22d ago
I haven't made a full switch yet, at this point I'm experimenting more heavily in Rust. First I built a wrapper for a very simple text editor based on KDEs KTextEditor (basically bindings around Qt C++) then a wasm wrapper around Canvas/WebGL for a basic 2d display list that currently supports sprites and gradient masking. So far I've been getting away with it just as pure vibe code. However, the bulk of my primary application is written in Typescript (both client, server and workers). I watched a recent podcast with Anders Hejlsberg (creator of C# and Typescript) where he made a strong argument for why they chose Go over Rust for the updated Typescript compiler. Due to similarities between Typescript and Go, partially based around them both being GC languages, it was just a better fit for a port. So I am on the fence a bit here but still leaning towards Rust. I'm going to see how far I can push my two personal experiments. I'd really like to get the significant majority of the code I write into two languages (Typescript for anything web-ish and Rust for everything server-ish).
sehw 22d ago
[dead]
lukaslueg 22d ago
A MSVC-backend? At this time of year! At this time of day! In this part of the country! Localized entirely within Microsoft?!? Yes. May I see it? No.
hatefulheart 22d ago
Sephora is tier-1 at the Clown convention
nacozarina 22d ago
… and they proved you can still write tier-10 software with it
- prisonguard 21d ago
  LOL!
timedude 21d ago
The best C++ interop is just writing C++. Anything else is just wasting time and energy.
paaloeye 21d ago
I'm wondering how they deal with long compilation times
astarc 21d ago
It is a decompiled language.
okokwhatever 21d ago
This thread deserves a meme
grougnax 21d ago
[dead]
divs4real 21d ago
started learning rust using the rust programming language book last month!
splicebot 21d ago
In my time in VC++ and .NET teams, there was only one 1st tier language at MS. It was the one that existed to be whatever Windows wanted - VC++. I've not been there for about 10 years but I haven't heard that anything changed and the blog pretty much confirms that sentiment. My advice to the Rust team: you're going to get shoved so I hope you're good at shoving back. At least you don't have to worry about stevesi (unless you're with a16z or have kids).
diegof79 21d ago
It’s interesting how things have changed in 25 years. Around 2001, Microsoft was crusading against open source and facing an antitrust lawsuit with Netscape. Now 25 years later, MS runs its cloud businesses with Linux, and their development in Rust.
- imglorp 21d ago
  They've changed business model from selling software (windows, office, terminal server) to selling services (cloud services, user surveillance/exfil, advertising). The OS is just a vehicle to drive those service streams: maybe it's even a loss leader?
- hn_submit 21d ago
  That grin will soon be wiped off their faces when Linux Mint takes over the desktop and wipes another one or two Trillion dollars off their market cap.
- MBCook 21d ago
  New CEOs can do that to a company.
hanw040519 21d ago
We don't learn Rust at school at all(both undergratuate and gratuate student)
shevy-java 21d ago
Rust is now in the Top Ten of TIOBE. Now, TIOBE sucks, but I found that as a general trend plotted over years, it is not that bad. So Rust is definitely having solid demonstrated use cases in the "real" world.
psyclobe 21d ago
Microsoft is a tier-0 company.
AJRF 21d ago
i've never seen such a damning indictment of a language.
up2isomorphism 21d ago
So do we observe overall Microsoft software quality improvement so far?
tylerchilds 21d ago
How the open source turn tables have open source turned
lasky 21d ago
who cares. AI will translate brain waves to binary within 5 years.
apatheticonion 21d ago
I've been writing Rust professionally for the last 5 years (where my first decade of professional experience started in frontend, then moved down the stack TypeScript/Node, Go, C# and so on). From the perspective of high level application development, I can't see a technical use case for a language other than Rust these days. If wasm worked (and MacOS/Windows/Android/iOS native UI support existed), I would write my backends and frontends exclusively in Rust. From a low level programming perspective, the high performance of Rust combined with the self-describing type system makes it very ergonomic to use (trying to figure out how a C function signature translates to behavior is a frustrating experience for me). The thing I have been most saddened about is the lack of professional opportunities for Rust, particularly in Sydney (where I live). I considered moving to the US for the higher salaries and access to Rust roles but recently landed a role here.
- ThunderSizzle 21d ago
  Interesting perspective. I toyed with rust a bit from the perspective of a c# background (and a bit of java, php, classic asp, JavaScript, typescript, etc) . I like rust, but I've come to still prefer c#'s object oriented features. Perhaps it's my naivety, but I've found c# AOT compilation to do plenty of trimming and startup performance optimization that I don't see it as a bad option. Have you made a personal comparison on Rust vs Object Oriented Languages like c#?
  - apatheticonion 21d ago
    From a software design standpoint, it certainly takes some adjustment going from OOP to the compositional architecture and structural trait system used by Rust, but it's not that big a shift. The biggest downsides are the poor standard library that ships with Rust and the non prescriptive project structure which puts too much authority on the writer to figure out. The biggest wins are that runtime exceptions and concurrency bugs are impossible. So you can basically write Rust with your eyes closed and, if it compiles, it's probably right. Due to the high level of trust the compiler gives you, PR reviews (and reviewing AI generated code) is limited to design decisions and logic implementations. I only really think about architectural decisions, like "this code belongs to X domain, so I should put it in X crate" or "my project should use a hexagonal architecture, does this change violate that? Should I create a package/crate to contain this logic?" If you don't care about optimisations, a naive implementation in Rust will effortlessly outperform C# and use orders of magnitude less resources, but optionally, the pay off for optimisation is high.
zapzupnz 21d ago
Embrace. Extend. <-- You are here. Extinguish. We may never actually reach Extinguish. That won't be by Microsoft's choice, though.
- jamesnorden 21d ago
  Comment from 2007.
  - zapzupnz 20d ago
    Comment from every dang year. The more recent complaints have been about Github being ruined by Microsoft. And this is why MS gets away with EEE, because people have short memories and say to themselves "nah, it won't happen again this time". Then it happens. Again. And again.
Havoc 21d ago
What other langs do they consider tier 1? What’s in tier 2?
Alien1Being 21d ago
Waiting for the deluge of Rust cultists....
TimurRakhmatull 21d ago
[flagged]
marsven_422 21d ago
[dead]
tenox7 21d ago
VisualRust#
globalnode 21d ago
Yet another good reason for me to steer clear of the language.
respectattentio 21d ago
I don't know why I feel the entire software world is going to switch to Rust (more than the others), C++, and Assembly soon. Especially after the successful Bun 1.4 runtime migration to Rust.
alkonaut 21d ago
Conversion of legacy nontrivial C++ code bases into Rust (or anything else for that matter) feels like it should be one of the "Millenium problems" for AGI. That and full self driving - including the nuances of gesturing to a human about who's going to reverse in a single lane in a snowstorm. But if 50% of code can be converted automatically to safe idiomatic Rust? Great. Doesn't sound too far fetched. But yes, there's certainly a long tail here.
- bpye 21d ago
  > Conversion of legacy nontrivial C++ code bases into Rust (or anything else for that matter) feels like it should be one of the "Millenium problems" for AGI. Whilst I have no doubt that LLMs will be useful here, I still have reservations about validation. I think experience tells us that test coverage is generally insufficient to ensure functional equivalence, and not all components are well specified.
  - azhenley 21d ago
    ProgramBench was published recently where agents have to reconstruct a program given just the binary and documentation. https://programbench.com/ https://programbench.com/
- Jean-Papoulos 21d ago
  If we have AGI, it can just solve all the memory issues in the existing codebase instead of rewriting it all.
  - alkonaut 21d ago
    But then we'd still be left with a C or C++ codebase.
    - throwaway273748 21d ago
      Given the hypothetical presupposes AGI, so what? We wouldn't be the ones reading or maintaining it.
tobin1994 21d ago
[dead]
tpoacher 21d ago
Just to clarify, are they 'using' it, or are they 'embracing' it?
rrgok 21d ago
I never hated a programming language grammar until I saw Rust's. I understand the technical advantages; I still hate it. I know it's silly.
vogje01 21d ago
I think there is no way that they recode everything in Rust in the next xears. As far as I know, it's inside Microsoft just a PoC for the moment.
nektro 20d ago
this is fantastic news but it being rustc_codegen_utc and not rustc_codegen_msvc really threw me

726 points by mmastrac 22d ago

ComputerGuru 22d ago

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

pjmlp 22d ago
You have it already on VSCode, which isn't quite the same, however nowadays it is an open question which one is more relevant for Microsoft's management, especially given that VS isn't cross platform (see Azure), and is stuck with WPF/.NET Framework.
mrec 22d ago
I'd also love to see MS sponsoring Windows support for a modern linker like mold or wild.
- delta_p_delta_x 22d ago
  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.
  - jcelerier 22d ago
    to be fair mold or wild's full link is a few hundred times faster than a link.exe incremental relink
flohofwoe 22d ago
Optimistic to assume that modern day programmers even know what a debugger is, or if they do, consider it as anything else than some weird ancient shibboleth only used by the greybeards ;)
- rafaelmn 22d ago
  Debugger MCP better
  - a012 22d ago
    It’s all /skills now
  - josephg 22d ago
    But of a tangent but I think cognitive skills are starting to become like physical skills. If we don’t move our bodies, we waste away physically. If we don’t do hard cognitive work sometimes - like writing and debugging code - I worry our minds will atrophy. I don’t have a problem with cars. But walking is still good for us.
    - bluGill 22d ago
      Try, but what skills are work keeping? We need something cogntive, but not everything. I know a few people who blacksmith as a hobby (often for the physical exercise as much as the work), but most people are happy not knowing how to do that job. I know how to set the air-fuel ratio on a gas engine, but I'm glad I don't need to tweak those parameters while driving (unlike a 1910s car where you did), and I won't miss oil changes on my cars as I move to electric.
      - lelanthran 22d ago
        > Try, but what skills are work keeping? We need something cogntive, but not everything. Are you trying to be funny?
        bluGill 22d ago
        Work should be worth. I'm not sure if that is me or autocorrect.
        lelanthran 21d ago
dethswatch 22d ago
RustRover, my friend.
- throwaway85825 22d ago
  I thought rover forced you to use their horrible new UI?
  - dethswatch 21d ago
    I've been using it since ~23 without any issues, the ui's have all been similar to Borland's stuff since the beginning.
jeroenhd 22d ago
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.
thrwaway73637 22d ago
u dont debug rust mate if it compiles it works
MaulingMonkey 22d ago
IDK about "tier 1" but I'll note I've used VS for debugging and profiling Rust binaries. I even wrote a tool to auto-generate a wrapper .sln so I can easily launch from VS: https://github.com/MaulingMonkey/cargo-vs https://github.com/MaulingMonkey/cargo-vs The main pain point IME was poor debugger visualizers for standard containers and enums. I fixed some of that for the standard containers by writing some natvis files for std: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues?q=state%3Aclosed%20is%3Apr%20author%3AMaulingMonkey https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues?q=state%3Aclosed%20... . Admittedly, they broke a few times. They also weren't automatically included in the pdbs, so I wrote a crate for that: https://github.com/MaulingMonkey/natvis-pdbs https://github.com/MaulingMonkey/natvis-pdbs . And then someone crated and stabilized #[debugger_visualizer] for rust itself, which can do the same job: https://doc.rust-lang.org/reference/attributes/debugger.html https://doc.rust-lang.org/reference/attributes/debugger.html . (...I should check on enum visualization, but I suspect it's still poor.)
uncle_kostya 21d ago
Works already in Visual Studio Code, even seamlessly between C++ and Rust

pjmlp 22d ago

This is very big news, all major OS vendors that also have a role in C and C++ language tooling, now have diversified their options in systems programming languages for greenfield development. Additionally we finally get some public news about the MSVC integration rumors regarding Rust.

ghostly_s 22d ago
Are you thinking this augurs more interoperability features in C?
- pjmlp 22d ago
  Why should it? COM and WinRT (basically COM Next) are the way to do cross language Interoperability in Windows since VB 5 replaced VBX with OCX, it was a key feature in .NET Framework design, and revamped on Windows 8, when WinRT was introduced as the original design for .NET (Ext-VOS). https://arstechnica.com/features/2012/10/windows-8-and-winrt-everything-old-is-new-again https://arstechnica.com/features/2012/10/windows-8-and-winrt... See windows-rs crate.
hn_submit 21d ago
I'm totally disgusted that my Visual Studio 2022 instance uses 2 Gigabytes (!!) of RAM to run. What the hell is it doing that it's using that kind of memory? How about those morons solving that first before moving towards Rust. An IDE shouldn't have to use more than a 100MB of RAM tops. Anything more is inexcusable or needs a detailed explanation. BTW Firefox uses 1.1GB RAM so it's not immune from criticism either.
- pjmlp 21d ago
  The complaint can be applied to any modern software, unfortunately.
  - vintagedave 21d ago
    You're right, though I'm not sure about all modern software quite to that extent. VS does have a reputation for being bloated. Even startup is not super fast IMO. I checked just now. A recent Delphi with a project open: 175-200MB. Water (our IDE, I work at RemObjects) about 300MB.

_joel 22d ago

Site down, maybe they need port it to use Rust... They use wordpress

echelon 22d ago
A lot of infrastructure is going to be ported to Rust. It's fantastic for websites and servers, and LLMs are very good at generating it. The primary downside of Rust is the long compile times, especially with macros (serde, etc.) If that can be fixed, it will be sublime.
- deleted 22d ago
  [deleted]
- tonyedgecombe 22d ago
  I like Rust a lot but I'm not sure it would come very high up my list for web applications.
  - echelon 22d ago
    Axum and Actix are phenomenal web frameworks. The type system and error handling ergonomics make it easier to write defect-free code than, say, Go or Java. Simple servers are request scoped and mostly feature linear request handling, so you're writing simple vanilla Rust without the complex pointer semantics that you would use for systems programming. The async pieces aren't difficult either. Serde-annotated structs are the best serialization/deserialization story anywhere. It integrates super ergonomically into Axum and Actix to make writing request handlers a breeze. They're super easy to read, too.
    - germandiago 22d ago
      > Axum and Actix are phenomenal web frameworks Compared to what? I see ASP.NET Core and Quarkus very competitive. The virtual threads in Java are great, paired with structured concurrency IMHO. If I have to go microservice or API, I would choose FastAPI for fastest delivery and if I have to rewrite, Go, unless it is massive scale and scaling horizontally becomes a headache I would not consider Rust/C++ for this. All the backend, etc. for the company I have been working for is C++ for the fast parts but all tools around are Python (with NiceGUI and Flask mostly). I think the combination is quite powerful, btw.

DidntUseIt 22d ago

Link doesn’t work. What’s a Tier 1 language?

gshubert17 22d ago
(Link worked for me ...) This “Tier-1 language” engineering status for Rust means giving internal teams a paved path from local development to production: secure toolchain builds, productive developer tooling, quality workflows, deep platform integration, and compliance with the SDL requirements Microsoft software must meet.
- swiftcoder 22d ago
  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"
  - theanonymousone 22d ago
    Java and Python are not on that list?
    - monocasa 22d ago
      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.
meindnoch 22d ago
Tier 1 is the summit of summits - the summum bonum of languages, the highest order to which a language can aspire. Very few ever attain it. Non multa, sed multum: not many, but only those of extraordinary quality. Most languages remain forever in Tier 3, never passing beyond its gates. Of these, scarcely 1% ascend to Tier 2. And from that already distinguished company, a mere 0.1% possess the refinement, depth, and excellence required to cross the final threshold into Tier 1. Consider what that means: Tier 1 represents roughly the top 0.001% of languages. Pauci sed electi - few, but chosen. The crème de la crème. The aristocracy of languages. Primus inter pares, yet standing at the very edge of what programming language greatness can be. Ad astra per aspera. Through hardship, to the stars. Tier 1 is not merely another rank: it is the ultima Thule, the farthest frontier, the crown, the apotheosis.

LazyIDE 22d ago

[flagged]

calvbak 22d ago

This is great! Hope this trend will continue in the future; using a memory-safe language should be a top priority imo in context of the coming rogue AI swarms.

swiftcoder 22d ago

I guess the big question is whether they are going to open up rustc_codegen_utc for use outside of Microsoft?

afdbcreid 22d ago
They responded in the Zulip threads that yes, this is the plan, although they don't know if and what things will be open-source yet.

meerita 22d ago

Good news they adopted Rust as Tier-1 language. I hope their Weather app stop consuming more than 1GB RAM https://www.notebookcheck.net/Windows-11-s-built-in-Weather-app-wastes-more-than-1-GB-of-RAM.1364205.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Windows-11-s-built-in-Weather-...

geodel 22d ago
But Tier-1 app consuming Tier-1 RAM seems officially approved.
pjmlp 22d ago
The problem is the Webview2 prevalence, and note many Rust projects love their webviews as well.
- airstrike 21d ago
  Not the ones made with iced <3
  - pjmlp 21d ago
    Yeah, however there are probably much more using Tauri.
Verdex 22d ago
I feel like the weather app makes a lot of sense from a corporate politics point of view. A 1mb weather app would have a significantly less impressive pie chart associated with it come "here are our improvements" presentation. Also if times get tough and you're told to reduce headcount by 10%, who do you want to get rid of. Sally who knows the USB driver end to end or Todd who wrote the bloated 1gb weather app. (Don't feel bad for Todd, he knew what he was getting himself into.)
- Escapado 22d ago
  Did Todd just know or did his PO tell him to add telemetry tool number 24 while he was protesting and begged to be allowed to migrate to a newer rendering library but got shot down promptly because "KPI line must go up"? :)

the__alchemist 22d ago

With certain rough edges like complex traits and Async aside, rust is an S-tier lang in several domains. Of interest: - Embedded - PC desktop applications - Computationally-intense scientific programming. (Chem, structural bio etc) - OSes, drivers etc - High-performance tasks in general. CPU, GPU, etc. It's not a memory-safety one-trick pony; it's a well-rounded lang which has learned from its predecessors.

varjag 22d ago
Calculate ackermann(4,4), make no mistakes.
bigfishrunning 22d ago
Honestly, the only domains that I think rust isn't suitable for are: * rapid-prototyping, where javascript and python are still top-tier * adding scriptability to existing programs, where lua and scheme (and python) are popular * Server-side API implementation (rust is usable here, but I think Go fits the slot better)
- edukite 22d ago
  My employer company go through JavaScript, Java, Golang and at the end landed on Rust for srver side and don't want to change anything. Everything is Rust now, regardless of traffic. I don't know why you think it's only usable but this is your right.
  - bigfishrunning 22d ago
    I do think rust works there (as you clearly know), i just like Go's ergonomics for that exact task better, that's all.
- bryanlarsen 22d ago
  Rust is great for rapid protoyping, IMO. Or, at least the subset of rapid prototyping that involves massive rewrites to try out different approaches. Rust has a saying "if it compiles, it works", the compiler really ensures that you don't miss something when doing that rewrite.

js8 22d ago

Is Microsoft still trying to embrace, extend, extinguish Netscape after all those years? :-)

boredatoms 22d ago
I guess we should watch for contributions to Servo
layer8 22d ago
You’ll know when they publish Visual R++ or Rust.NET.
- paulluuk 22d ago
  Don't forget about R#
  - layer8 22d ago
    I was originally going to write that, but R# already exists: https://rsharp.net/ https://rsharp.net/ (based on https://www.r-project.org/ https://www.r-project.org/)
    - delta_p_delta_x 22d ago
      Not to be confused with the other R#, which is ReSharper. https://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/ https://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/
- SSLy 22d ago
  you jest but F# already does the ocamlness of Rust, no? and you don't need a borrow checker.
  - layer8 22d ago
    For tracking ownership of non-memory resources you still need something like that.

mtgh2s 22d ago

You gotta have balls or be receiving tons of money to publicly celebrate the sloppiest software company of the decade making your programming language Tier 1 internally.

nazgulsenpai 22d ago
Probably the fact they're a $3.7tn company has something to do with it.

pornel 22d ago

The big news here is they've replaced LLVM with MSVC's backend.

booi 22d ago
I'm sure that's a requirement for being a "Tier-1" language.
- monocasa 21d ago
  Eh, they call TypeScript a tier 1 language too.
dartharva 21d ago
MSVC always was the default backend for Windows platforms.
- qalmakka 21d ago
  Codegen was still done via LLVM. LLVM supports the MSVC _runtime_, here they're talking about using their (arguably worse) backend directly to generate code and do optimisations
qalmakka 21d ago
... but why? The MSVC backend has been falling far behind LLVM with every release. I understand they want uniformity but IMHO either they catch up or they switch fully to LLVM, if they can
- pjmlp 21d ago
  Windows ecosystem, and all those things MSVC backend can do and LLVM does not. For the same reason a Rust frontend is being developed for GCC.
  - LtWorf 21d ago
    What are these things?

mgaunard 22d ago

does it mean there is a rust.net?

dralley 22d ago
There is a rustc_codegen_clr which transpiles to .NET https://github.com/fractalfir/rustc_codegen_clr https://github.com/fractalfir/rustc_codegen_clr
- mgaunard 22d ago
  > This project is still early in its developement. Bugs, crashes and miscompilations are expected. DO NOT USE IT FOR ANYTHING SERIOUS. how can one claim it is tier-1? Also random student, nothing official from Microsoft.
  - pali6 22d ago
    That project is not in any direct way related to Microsoft
  - debugnik 22d ago
    We thought your Rust.NET comment was somewhat in jest. No, Microsoft isn't porting Rust to .NET, they barely try to support anything other than C# on it nowadays, but the article mentions an internal adapter for MSVC codegen. The project linked above has been posted to HN in the past a few times though.
DidntUseIt 22d ago
Just had a PTSD flashback... The year was 2002, VB6 had just been retired for VB.NET which had 0 backward compatibility. And then we all became Flash/AS3 developers. The End
- 4petesake 21d ago
  Cold Fusion 1,000 mile gaze says hello

petilon 22d ago

If it is a tier-1 language why isn't it supported in Visual Studio?

brunoborges 22d ago
Because it takes time. Even with coding agents, to add the capability. Then, there is the question on whether Rust developers who like to engage with Microsoft tools, would really consider Visual Studio as their IDE, instead of something like VS Code, VS Code Agent Mode, GitHub Copilot App, or GitHub Copilot CLI with simpler editors. I'd be curious to know whether Rust developers believe Visual Studio is the right place for Microsoft to invest Rust specific coding capabilities.
- not_a9 22d ago
  Visual Studio does have a really nice C++ debugger - one would imagine the C++ debugging capabilities should translate to Rust.
  - pjmlp 21d ago
    Hot code reloading, and incremental linking would be great, given the build times.
    - deleted 21d ago
      [deleted]
- pdpi 22d ago
  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 Rust is poorly supported, end of story.
  - 22d ago

macleginn 22d ago

The text is mostly about rustc_codegen_utc; maybe this should be reflected in the title? Also the use of italics there is rather jarring.

larodi 22d ago

ermm... which are the rust-native libs which enable winrt3.0 native apps?

tcfhgj 22d ago
Do you mean winui3? windows-rs
- larodi 21d ago
  winui3, yes. but afaik windows-rs is the generic crate, right? not something ms released as rust-first approach to winui3?
  - tcfhgj 21d ago
    It includes Windows Reactor, a fairly new API for WinUI Apps

this_user 22d ago

Now their broken slop code is at least memory safe.

ArsenDjukic 22d ago
[dead]

e4m2 22d ago

From the linked Zulip thread (https://rust-lang.zulipchat.com/#narrow/channel/131828-t-compiler/topic/rustc-codegen-utc/near/623181597 https://rust-lang.zulipchat.com/#narrow/channel/131828-t-com...): > We are running different workloads including rustc perf suite. In general the runtime performance is on par with llvm. Not what I would've expected!

bryanlarsen 22d ago

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.

bluGill 22d ago
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 more productive, but inflation will eat that up, so I expect a rewrite to be more expensive). If Rust can work with my existing code though - I know of a number of small places where there is reason to rewrite anyway because the code is bad (or sometimes was good but not nicely flexible for the features we have added since).
- deleted 22d ago
  [deleted]
- tyre 22d ago
  What were you working on that cost a billion dollars to rewrite? Or was that hyperbole?
  - bluGill 22d ago
    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)
    - redox99 22d ago
      Btw grok found out in less than ten seconds what place you refer to and likely what software within that company. Things that wouldn't be worth your time before are trivial these days with LLMs.

VimEscapeArtist 22d ago

M$ choosing Rust might be the strongest argument for picking Go instead

germandiago 22d ago
They strike different balances. Rust is absolute performance, similar to C++. Go is deliver fast and get a very good performance to effort ratio.
- VimEscapeArtist 22d ago
  It was meant as sarcasm, but judging by the downvotes, I clearly didn’t land it :)

cnrcode 22d ago

[dead]

KingOfCoders 22d ago

Fable migrated a Go/Wails project for me to Rust/GPUI and it's so much faster, there is the possibility of Rust to gobble up many more projects.

Surac 22d ago

I remember an other 1 tier language ms once had. Anyone remember Visual-J? On the other hand if we could code in rust and get windows.forms as a ui it might make sense. MS is burning UI layer faster than one can train on

Colegno 22d ago

Being technically approved by Microsoft is not a proof of quality...

afdbcreid 22d ago
It could as well be the opposite, but Rust does not need a proof of quality today, certainly not from Microsoft. Still, becoming Tier 1 in major trillion-dollar corporations (Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and I know Google also has efforts in that direction) is something.
- bryanlarsen 22d ago
  Google announced that Android contains 5 million lines of Rust last year; sounds Tier-1 to me.
  - afdbcreid 22d ago
    Android is a bit special inside Google (also Chromium). They are managed outside the main monorepo (google3) and their policies are different. From what people inside Google have told me, they do want to introduce Rust into google3 but that work has only begun.
    - kccqzy 22d ago
      They wasted a few years trying to introduce Swift then Carbon because they thought the Rust C++ interop wasn’t good enough.

FrustratedMonky 22d ago

As much as I like Rust. Still sad that F# didn't get this much support from their own mother.

HPsquared 22d ago

Visual Rust sounds like a defect but I'm looking forward to it.

burakemir 22d ago

Congrats to the folks involved! Having previously led Rust at Google, I remember several great cross-company discussions with Microsoft engineers on interop. Companies with massive C++ codebases use Rust as a pragmatic hedge. C++ as we know it is unlikely to ever become fully memory safe, and unlike C++ standard committee voices who dispute the urgency, major industry players need actionable solutions today. Because these existing codebases are so vast, Rust must have a viable C++ interop story. However, defining what "good interop" means remains tricky. C++ routinely tolerates aliasing and relies on patterns that violate Rust's aliasing rules. Shared backend infrastructure (like connecting rustc directly to MSVC backends) helps with ABI layout, cross-language inlining, and toolchain parity, but it doesn't solve the core type system divergence. The fundamental obstacle is type systems: * Boundaries remain unsafe: Compilers cannot statically verify C++ safety invariants. Crossing the boundary stays in unsafe territory. * Idiomatic C++ structures often cannot map cleanly into Rust idioms. This forces developers into onerous safety comments or heavy wrapper layers. At some point, application writers will consider serialization / in-process RPC or a full rewrite as a cheaper or cleaner option of getting interop. Bridging this gap on the ABI level is pragmatic, but pushing Rust's semantics to accommodate C++ edge cases risks compromising "pure Rust" goals. I doubt the broader Rust community will favor complicating Rust's safety model just to smooth over legacy C++ patterns. To be clear: practical interop is a worthwhile investment, but "seamless interop" needs serious qualification. It will always have hard limits. There will always be friction at the boundary and it will always be a tough sell.

ellyagg 22d ago

While literally true, the phrasing of this title will certainly and (IMO) purposefully confuse some headline scanners vs: “Rust Is a Tier-1 Language at Microsoft”.

gregw2 22d ago

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-of-c-c-with-rust/ 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-rust https://www.darpa.mil/research/programs/translating-all-c-to... Feb 2026 Progress report: https://github.com/DARPA-TRACTOR-Program/Reports/blob/main/First_TRACTOR_Evaluation_Report.pdf https://github.com/DARPA-TRACTOR-Program/Reports/blob/main/F...

burakemir 22d ago
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.
- gregw2 22d ago
  Oh, I 100% agree. The question is how much you can reduce the effort of the port/migration, and in particular the validation effort. I've worked on projects where the core bits of code were "90%" converted by some automated tool, and in my view the overall benefit to the project timeline was probably only 20-30% because of the Amdahl's-law-type overheads of validation and bits of code not supported by the automation/conversion process. Nice, but no silver bullet. Non-idiomatic porting also isn't super-helpful if the resulting code isn't maintainable.
- mkehrt 22d ago
  As I pointed out in a sibling comment, the plan isn't for it to work. This is a job posting for a researcher at MSR to investigate what it might look like someday.

superkuh 22d ago

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.

0x457 22d ago
You can compile any old code with newer rustc as long as old project does not use unstable features that have changed/went away. What are you on? I recently recompiled project from 2015 with latest stable rust just fine. All breaking changesin rust done via editions and you can mix-and-match editions.
- estebank 22d ago
  I suspect GP is using system rustc to build random projects off of github and doesn't use one of the distros that actually updates rustc, like Fedora, SuSE or Arch. Then the conversation is about forward compatibility, whether developers should wait X amount of time before using new std APIs or features, and whether the ease of using rustup and project expectation of it being accessible is reasonable or not.
  - 0x457 21d ago
    Well, "core" community projects have pretty decent MSRV for forward compatibility.
22d ago

adikshatriyag 22d ago

crazy i like that

axus 22d ago

I love how World of Warcraft "gear tier" jargon has expanded into the rest of the world. Pre-Y2K, the pseudo-formal usage of "tier-N" wasn't widespread in the US.

minimaxir 22d ago
In World of Warcraft, gear tier is an ordinal representing the raid tier the gear was made accessible in, not an indication of its importance/power.

rererereferred 22d ago

But which GUI toolkit will they use for all their new rust applications?

tcfhgj 22d ago
WinUI (3) via Windows Reactor

i2talics 22d ago

I hope announcements like this show that Rust is not a fledgling little language that moves fast and breaks things anymore. It's a mature, serious competitor to well established languages like C++ and C#. This is particularly important when trying to compare the experience of using Rust to other languages in the "better C/C++" space like Zig and Odin -- these are much newer and have more rough edges than Rust.

tialaramex 22d ago
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" languages a few years ago, Carbon is still being worked on, Herb Sutter's "Cpp2" seems dead or at least in a coma, Hylo is probably also in a coma, it has several "Write this text" type blog posts, dated 2025 for example...
- hiccuphippo 22d ago
  > other two famous Handmade languages Jai and... C3? FilC?
  - tialaramex 21d ago
    Jai and C3. I do not consider FilC to be a distinct programming language. AIUI the C I wrote twenty years ago would work with Filip's approach, maybe it needs minor tweaks in a few cases (mmap stunts for example) but likely not for much of what I wrote.
- zamalek 22d ago
  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.

m3kw9 22d ago

Good, C# is one of the worst languages there is, hopefully they turn it in to tier 18

devy 22d ago

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 millions of consumers and businesses. I was literrally helping a S&B having to replace the entire fleet of working PCs simply because Windows 10 of EOL and Windows 11 refused to run on those legacy hardware. Quite honestly those PCs ran just fine! That's why some has been migrated to Linux, in particular to Google's ChromeOS Flex.[2] 3. RAM shortage due to AI boom exhausted the memory chip manufacturers' production pipepline for at least the next 5 years. This means the mainstream PCs sold today will actually have a diminishing RAM size configurations than last year's in order for the PC manufacturers to not drastically raise the product price (or raise prices drastically for high RAM configurations like Apple does). This requires the Windows 11 operating system to be more conservative about RAM usage, Rust can be a part of that. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDtMuS7BExE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDtMuS7BExE [2] https://chromeos.google/products/chromeos-flex/ https://chromeos.google/products/chromeos-flex/

MarleTangible 22d ago
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.
- throwaway2037 21d ago
  > Microsoft managed to add arbitrary code execution to Notepad. You write as though this was an intentional feature. Not, it was a CVE. I had to Google about it. For anyone else who didn't know about this CVE: "Microsoft added Markdown (.md) support and interactive hyperlink parsing to the modern Windows 11 version of Notepad. Improper validation of links meant that clicking a crafted hyperlink inside a Markdown file could cause Notepad to launch unverified protocol handlers without proper warnings." This CVE has already been patched. > And it all points to a total disregard of the end-user I don't understand this part. Are you trying to say that because they had a security flaw in a new feature that this demonstrates "total disregard of the end-user"? It seems like quite a reach.

bitwize 22d ago

NT kernel rewrite when?

dismalaf 22d ago

If I were the Rust foundation I'd be keeping this to myself right now.

smcin 21d ago
Why?

stevetron 22d ago

So, Rust.NET?

4petesake 21d ago
VisualRust.NET Copilot

guywithahat 22d ago

It’s cool to see rust join C++, C#, and typescript as primary engineering languages. Confusingly there are no tier 2 or 3 languages, just tier 1 at Microsoft

abbefaria27 22d ago

What’s the story for Rust-C++ interoperability these days? That’s what kills adoption. Most C++ devs I know like the idea of Rust, but no one is going to go rewrite 30 years of working code. It needs to be something you can incorporate gradually.

drop_star 22d ago
ya our codebase is 30m lines of c++
afdbcreid 22d ago
There's an interop initiative by the Rust Foundation, there is a project goal to map the problem space, there was an effort to introduce an attribute (`#[rustc_splat]`) to allow calling overloaded functions, and there are various community-generated tools for more or less automated bindings generation.
kibwen 22d ago
Rust's raison d'être is to improve the confidence of the security-critical parts of your system. You don't need to rewrite all 30M lines of code to benefit from it, you just need to identify the 1% of your codebase with the greatest attack surface (e.g. any internet-facing string parser), cordon that part of the codebase off with a C ABI, and then convert that part to Rust. This is similar to how Firefox incorporates bits of Rust into its own C++ codebase over time (e.g. for parsing URLs).
nicoburns 22d ago
There's a huge push for this from the big companies adopting Rust. Google has been developing https://github.com/google/crubit https://github.com/google/crubit. The older cbdingen is still usable if more limited (it's what Firefox uses for some pretty involved interop).
estebank 21d ago
You might want to take a look at https://github.com/hkalbasi/zngur https://github.com/hkalbasi/zngur Calling Rust from C++ seems to be more technically straightforward than the reverse.

stillpointlab 22d ago

I haven't made a full switch yet, at this point I'm experimenting more heavily in Rust. First I built a wrapper for a very simple text editor based on KDEs KTextEditor (basically bindings around Qt C++) then a wasm wrapper around Canvas/WebGL for a basic 2d display list that currently supports sprites and gradient masking. So far I've been getting away with it just as pure vibe code. However, the bulk of my primary application is written in Typescript (both client, server and workers). I watched a recent podcast with Anders Hejlsberg (creator of C# and Typescript) where he made a strong argument for why they chose Go over Rust for the updated Typescript compiler. Due to similarities between Typescript and Go, partially based around them both being GC languages, it was just a better fit for a port. So I am on the fence a bit here but still leaning towards Rust. I'm going to see how far I can push my two personal experiments. I'd really like to get the significant majority of the code I write into two languages (Typescript for anything web-ish and Rust for everything server-ish).

sehw 22d ago

[dead]

lukaslueg 22d ago

A MSVC-backend? At this time of year! At this time of day! In this part of the country! Localized entirely within Microsoft?!? Yes. May I see it? No.

hatefulheart 22d ago

Sephora is tier-1 at the Clown convention

nacozarina 22d ago

… and they proved you can still write tier-10 software with it

prisonguard 21d ago
LOL!

timedude 21d ago

The best C++ interop is just writing C++. Anything else is just wasting time and energy.

paaloeye 21d ago

I'm wondering how they deal with long compilation times

astarc 21d ago

It is a decompiled language.

okokwhatever 21d ago

This thread deserves a meme

grougnax 21d ago

[dead]

divs4real 21d ago

started learning rust using the rust programming language book last month!

splicebot 21d ago

In my time in VC++ and .NET teams, there was only one 1st tier language at MS. It was the one that existed to be whatever Windows wanted - VC++. I've not been there for about 10 years but I haven't heard that anything changed and the blog pretty much confirms that sentiment. My advice to the Rust team: you're going to get shoved so I hope you're good at shoving back. At least you don't have to worry about stevesi (unless you're with a16z or have kids).

diegof79 21d ago

It’s interesting how things have changed in 25 years. Around 2001, Microsoft was crusading against open source and facing an antitrust lawsuit with Netscape. Now 25 years later, MS runs its cloud businesses with Linux, and their development in Rust.

imglorp 21d ago
They've changed business model from selling software (windows, office, terminal server) to selling services (cloud services, user surveillance/exfil, advertising). The OS is just a vehicle to drive those service streams: maybe it's even a loss leader?
hn_submit 21d ago
That grin will soon be wiped off their faces when Linux Mint takes over the desktop and wipes another one or two Trillion dollars off their market cap.
MBCook 21d ago
New CEOs can do that to a company.

hanw040519 21d ago

We don't learn Rust at school at all(both undergratuate and gratuate student)

shevy-java 21d ago

Rust is now in the Top Ten of TIOBE. Now, TIOBE sucks, but I found that as a general trend plotted over years, it is not that bad. So Rust is definitely having solid demonstrated use cases in the "real" world.

psyclobe 21d ago

Microsoft is a tier-0 company.

AJRF 21d ago

i've never seen such a damning indictment of a language.

up2isomorphism 21d ago

So do we observe overall Microsoft software quality improvement so far?

tylerchilds 21d ago

How the open source turn tables have open source turned

lasky 21d ago

who cares. AI will translate brain waves to binary within 5 years.

apatheticonion 21d ago

I've been writing Rust professionally for the last 5 years (where my first decade of professional experience started in frontend, then moved down the stack TypeScript/Node, Go, C# and so on). From the perspective of high level application development, I can't see a technical use case for a language other than Rust these days. If wasm worked (and MacOS/Windows/Android/iOS native UI support existed), I would write my backends and frontends exclusively in Rust. From a low level programming perspective, the high performance of Rust combined with the self-describing type system makes it very ergonomic to use (trying to figure out how a C function signature translates to behavior is a frustrating experience for me). The thing I have been most saddened about is the lack of professional opportunities for Rust, particularly in Sydney (where I live). I considered moving to the US for the higher salaries and access to Rust roles but recently landed a role here.

ThunderSizzle 21d ago
Interesting perspective. I toyed with rust a bit from the perspective of a c# background (and a bit of java, php, classic asp, JavaScript, typescript, etc) . I like rust, but I've come to still prefer c#'s object oriented features. Perhaps it's my naivety, but I've found c# AOT compilation to do plenty of trimming and startup performance optimization that I don't see it as a bad option. Have you made a personal comparison on Rust vs Object Oriented Languages like c#?
- apatheticonion 21d ago
  From a software design standpoint, it certainly takes some adjustment going from OOP to the compositional architecture and structural trait system used by Rust, but it's not that big a shift. The biggest downsides are the poor standard library that ships with Rust and the non prescriptive project structure which puts too much authority on the writer to figure out. The biggest wins are that runtime exceptions and concurrency bugs are impossible. So you can basically write Rust with your eyes closed and, if it compiles, it's probably right. Due to the high level of trust the compiler gives you, PR reviews (and reviewing AI generated code) is limited to design decisions and logic implementations. I only really think about architectural decisions, like "this code belongs to X domain, so I should put it in X crate" or "my project should use a hexagonal architecture, does this change violate that? Should I create a package/crate to contain this logic?" If you don't care about optimisations, a naive implementation in Rust will effortlessly outperform C# and use orders of magnitude less resources, but optionally, the pay off for optimisation is high.

zapzupnz 21d ago

Embrace. Extend. <-- You are here. Extinguish. We may never actually reach Extinguish. That won't be by Microsoft's choice, though.

jamesnorden 21d ago
Comment from 2007.
- zapzupnz 20d ago
  Comment from every dang year. The more recent complaints have been about Github being ruined by Microsoft. And this is why MS gets away with EEE, because people have short memories and say to themselves "nah, it won't happen again this time". Then it happens. Again. And again.

Havoc 21d ago

What other langs do they consider tier 1? What’s in tier 2?

Alien1Being 21d ago

Waiting for the deluge of Rust cultists....

TimurRakhmatull 21d ago

[flagged]

marsven_422 21d ago

[dead]

tenox7 21d ago

VisualRust#

globalnode 21d ago

Yet another good reason for me to steer clear of the language.

respectattentio 21d ago

I don't know why I feel the entire software world is going to switch to Rust (more than the others), C++, and Assembly soon. Especially after the successful Bun 1.4 runtime migration to Rust.

alkonaut 21d ago

Conversion of legacy nontrivial C++ code bases into Rust (or anything else for that matter) feels like it should be one of the "Millenium problems" for AGI. That and full self driving - including the nuances of gesturing to a human about who's going to reverse in a single lane in a snowstorm. But if 50% of code can be converted automatically to safe idiomatic Rust? Great. Doesn't sound too far fetched. But yes, there's certainly a long tail here.

bpye 21d ago
> Conversion of legacy nontrivial C++ code bases into Rust (or anything else for that matter) feels like it should be one of the "Millenium problems" for AGI. Whilst I have no doubt that LLMs will be useful here, I still have reservations about validation. I think experience tells us that test coverage is generally insufficient to ensure functional equivalence, and not all components are well specified.
- azhenley 21d ago
  ProgramBench was published recently where agents have to reconstruct a program given just the binary and documentation. https://programbench.com/ https://programbench.com/
Jean-Papoulos 21d ago
If we have AGI, it can just solve all the memory issues in the existing codebase instead of rewriting it all.
- alkonaut 21d ago
  But then we'd still be left with a C or C++ codebase.
  - throwaway273748 21d ago
    Given the hypothetical presupposes AGI, so what? We wouldn't be the ones reading or maintaining it.

tobin1994 21d ago

[dead]

tpoacher 21d ago

Just to clarify, are they 'using' it, or are they 'embracing' it?

rrgok 21d ago

I never hated a programming language grammar until I saw Rust's. I understand the technical advantages; I still hate it. I know it's silly.

vogje01 21d ago

I think there is no way that they recode everything in Rust in the next xears. As far as I know, it's inside Microsoft just a PoC for the moment.

nektro 20d ago

this is fantastic news but it being rustc_codegen_utc and not rustc_codegen_msvc really threw me