Microsoft's Bold Plan To Purge C And C++ From Its Codebase By 2030 — Here's The Strategy

Microsoft is making a historic commitment to eliminate decades-old C and C++ code from its infrastructure, with a 2030 deadline firmly in place. This isn’t just a casual refactor — it’s a sweeping modernization effort designed to replace legacy systems with Rust, a memory-safe programming language that prevents entire categories of security vulnerabilities.

The Technical Approach: AI At Scale

Galen Hunt, one of Microsoft’s distinguished engineers, laid out the company’s game plan: combine algorithm-driven tooling with AI agents capable of rewriting millions of lines of code simultaneously. The infrastructure Microsoft has built can map source code, analyze it, and then have AI apply modifications at massive scale — essentially automating what would traditionally take teams of engineers years to accomplish manually.

This represents a fundamental shift from traditional refactoring. Instead of manually translating code line by line, Microsoft is leveraging large language models to accelerate the migration from C and C++ to Rust across its entire stack.

Why Now? The Memory-Safety Push

The push toward memory-safe programming didn’t start yesterday. Back in 2023, Microsoft began rewriting portions of the Windows kernel in Rust — a decision that came directly from Azure CTO Mark Russinovich, who instructed teams to stop initiating new C and C++ projects altogether and pivot to Rust instead.

Russinovich’s vision has only strengthened since then. Earlier this year, he doubled down on the commitment, confirming that Microsoft is fully invested in Rust and has already expanded its deployment across core systems. The company isn’t treating this as a pet project — it’s embedded in Microsoft’s organizational structure under the Future of Scalable Software Engineering group, housed within CoreAI.

Hiring Talent To Execute The Vision

To execute this ambitious agenda, Microsoft is actively recruiting a principal software engineer with deep expertise in systems-level Rust development. Ideal candidates would have backgrounds in compilers, databases, or operating systems — people who understand the low-level mechanics required to rewrite complex infrastructure.

Beyond Microsoft: Industry-Wide Implications

What makes this initiative particularly significant is its scope. The team’s mandate extends beyond just cleaning up Microsoft’s own technical debt. They’re developing tools and techniques designed to scale across the company and eventually roll out to the wider industry — meaning other enterprises could eventually benefit from the frameworks Microsoft builds.

The 2030 target gives Microsoft a decade to restructure one of the world’s largest and most complex codebases, replacing decades of C and C++ with a modern, safer alternative.