By Ellen Jennings-Trace
Publication Date: 2025-12-29 18:35:00
- Speculation arose after a Microsoft Engineer’s LinkedIn post suggested C++ replacement
- The engineer has since clarified this is a research project, not Microsoft plan
- Microsoft is moving towards Rust becoming its “1st class language”
In a LinkedIn post from Microsoft engineer Galen Hunt has generated a fair bit of talk after sharing his goal to “eliminate every line of C and C++ from Microsoft by 2030” – even advertising an open position on his team to move towards this.
The role’s purpose was to “help us [Microsoft] evolve and augment our infrastructure to enable translating Microsoft’s largest C and C++ systems to Rust” – with Hunt explaining that “powerful code processing infrastructure” has already been built.
However, the engineer has since updated his post to say “Just to clarify… Windows is *NOT* being rewritten in Rust with AI […] My team’s project is a research project.”
Project, not plan
According to the post, Hunt’s team’s mission is to “build…