Re: Microsoft is considering moving to Rust; potential opportunity for Ada2020

[Optikos <optikos@verizon.net>]

On Wednesday, July 17, 2019 at 1:53:26 PM UTC-5, Maciej Sobczak wrote:
> > https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-to-explore-using-rust
> 
> "The OS maker has been looking for safer C and C++ alternatives for years."
> 
> And? What makes the current context so much different, to enable the change this time?

The advent of Xlang begat from the minor miracle that was C++/WinRT 1.0.  Kenny Kerr's C++/WinRT was what (in reverse-chronological order) Herb Sutter's C++/CX, Herb Sutter's C++/CLI, and Stan Lippman's Managed C++ was trying to achieve but failed (3 times!) to grasp Kenny Kerr's correct vision for using C++'s types to model COM's types in the least-obnoxious least-culture-clash way.
https://kennykerr.ca/2018/10/10/xlang

> Certainly, now there are even more legacy apps than years ago, thus making the potential change even
> more difficult than it was already when they decided not to change.

Microsoft's current strategy seems to be to wrap legacy infrastructure via xlang (nee C++/WinRT now repurposed into being multilingual e.g. Python).  Xlang (which is currently at the heart of C++/WinRT 2.0) could be a key wrap all-prior-eras-of-software strategy of incrementally converting to more & more Rust in a Rust-wrap-now-but-fatally-suffocate-C/C++/C#-later strategy to removing legacy C/C++/C# code over coming years, as it is converted opportunistically from guts within unsafe-Rust-wrapper to pure-Rust guts (perhaps still with a little obligatory unsafe at the core but Rust Rust Rust all the way).

And the article does emphasize that Rust is merely under consideration.  This Xlang-based surround-&-suffocate-over-time stragegy could be followed by, say, C#-with-Rustesque-borrow-checker instead.  I can hear it now:  ‘We seriously considered Rust, but in the end we went with something a little bit different instead.’

> What I find the most interesting in this article, however, is that apparently C# did not make it as a
> preferred language in the Microsoft ecosystem. Not even after all the billions thrown into its marketing. 

Yes, I also was wondering why Microsoft isn't fervently exploring adding a Rust-esque borrow checker to C#, which would be the natural Microsofty thing to do, at least in prior eras of Microsoft.