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turgid [soylentnews.org] writes:

The Register reports [theregister.com] that Microsoft wants to replace all of its C and C++ code bases with Rust rewrites by 2030, developing new technology to do the translation along the way.

“Our strategy is to combine AI and Algorithms to rewrite Microsoft’s largest codebases,” he added. “Our North Star is ‘1 engineer, 1 month, 1 million lines of code.’”

The article goes on to quote much management-speak drivel from official Microsoft sources making grand claims about magic bullets and the end of all known software vulnerabilities with many orders of magnitude productivity improvements promised into the bargain.

Unlike C and C++, Rust is a memory-safe language, meaning it uses automated memory management to avoid out-of-bounds reads and writes, and use-after-free errors, as both offer attackers a chance to control devices. In recent years, governments have called for universal adoption of memory-safe languages – and especially Rust – to improve software security.

Automated memory management? Is the magic not in the compiler rather than the runtime? Do these people even know what they're talking about? And anyway, isn't C++2.0 going to solve all problems and be faster than Rust and better than Python? It'll be out Real Soon Now(TM). Plus you'll only have to half-rewrite your code.

Are we witnessing yet another expensive wild goose chase from Microsoft? Windows Longhorn, anyone?

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