46K views · Feb 26, 2025 · 34:41 · 0 HN recommenders · 6 mentions · discussed 2025–2026
Mark Russinovich's closing keynote at Rust Nation UK on Microsoft's adoption of Rust, covering security gains, integration challenges, performance results and lessons learned.
Why Hacker News points people here: Cited for concrete claims about Microsoft's Rust adoption, such as speedups from rewrites and internal C to Rust translation efforts.
“Mark Russinovich recently gave a talk at a UK Rust conference that mentioned Microsoft's internal attempts at large scale C->Rust translation,”HN comment, 2025
“simple rewriting in rust made some our code 5-15% faster (without deliberate optimizations)”
Russinovich says rewriting in Rust sped up some Microsoft code
Nevertheless Russinovich actually says something in the lines of "simple rewriting in rust made some our code 5-15% faster (without deliberate optimizations)": this video
Russinovich talk on Microsoft's Rust adoption
It is, while at the same time they have changed their point of view on allowing C++ for new projects at Microsoft. I also think Herb Sutter leaving his role at Microsoft might have been related with this. From "Microsoft Azure security evolution: Embrace secure multitenancy, Confidential Compute, and Rust" link "Decades of vulnerabilities have proven how difficult it is to prevent memory-corrupting bugs when using C/C++. While garbage-collected languages like C# or Java have proven more resilient to these issues, there are scenarios where they cannot be used. For such cases, we’re betting on Rust as the alternative to C/C++. Rust is a modern language designed to compete with the performance C/C++, but with memory safety and thread safety guarantees built into the language. While we are not able to rewrite everything in Rust overnight, we’ve already adopted Rust in some of the most critical components of Azure’s infrastructure. We expect our adoption of Rust to expand substantially over time." From "Windows security and resiliency: Protecting your business" link "And, in alignment with the Secure Future Initiative, we are adopting safer programming languages, gradually moving functionality from C++ implementation to Rust." Finally, "Microsoft is Getting Rusty: A Review of Successes and Challenges - Mark Russinovich" this video
“Mark Russinovich recently gave a talk at a UK Rust conference that mentioned Microsoft's internal attempts at large scale C->Rust translation,”
Mentions Microsoft's internal large-scale C to Rust translation efforts
Mark Russinovich recently gave a talk at a UK Rust conference that mentioned Microsoft's internal attempts at large scale C->Rust translation, this video
Well, it is kind of in line with company official communication anyway, so this goal is currently a business target, > Decades of vulnerabilities have proven how difficult it is to prevent memory-corrupting bugs when using C/C++. While garbage-collected languages like C# or Java have proven more resilient to these issues, there are scenarios where they cannot be used. For such cases, we’re betting on Rust as the alternative to C/C++. Rust is a modern language designed to compete with the performance C/C++, but with memory safety and thread safety guarantees built into the language. While we are not able to rewrite everything in Rust overnight, we’ve already adopted Rust in some of the most critical components of Azure’s infrastructure. We expect our adoption of Rust to expand substantially over time. -- link > And, in alignment with the Secure Future Initiative, we are adopting safer programming languages, gradually moving functionality from C++ implementation to Rust. -- link > We will accelerate and automate threat modeling, deploy CodeQL for code analysis to 100 percent of commercial products, and continue to expand Microsoft’s use of memory safe languages (such as C#, Python, Java, and Rust), building security in at the language level and eliminating whole classes of traditional software vulnerability. -- link So naturally, there are many people that besides AI KPIs, now have to match their SFI KPIs at Redmond, including Mark Russinovich. "Mark Russinovich, Microsof
“it appears the whole effort is more on the Azure side”
Shows Rust adoption is concentrated on Azure, not Windows
If you watch "Microsoft is Getting Rusty: A Review of Successes and Challenges" it appears the whole effort is more on the Azure side, and besides some timid adoption like GDI regions, there is a lukewarm adoption of Rust on Windows side, still pretty much a C and C++ feud. this video
“The only Microsoft divisions that are still all are into C++ is Windows and XBox”
Russinovich's talk on Microsoft divisions moving to Rust
You could have checked his conference talk as well, instead of downplaying the interview. "Microsoft is Getting Rusty: A Review of Successes and Challenges - Mark Russinovich" this video The only Microsoft divisions that are still all are into C++ is Windows and XBox, and still, C++/WinRT is now in maintenace, the team has moved into windows-rs, WDK now has Rust bindings available.
