Microsoft is looking for Rust developers to do some work on its Microsoft 365 platform

[thewayne]

This is a good move. They're migrating some core code libraries from C# to Rust. C# is not truly based on C and C++, it has characteristics of several languages. The language is pronounced SEE-SHARP and they wanted to use the musical sharp symbol, similar to the #, but it doesn't exist on pretty much every keyboard in the world, so they compromised and went with the name but the pound symbol.

The job is described as "...include "guiding technical direction, design and implementation of Rust component libraries, SDKs, and re-implementation of existing global scale C# based services to Rust."

The goodness is that Rust is a very tight language when it comes to memory strictness. Lots of languages are pretty loose when it comes to enforcing memory allocation and access, Rust is definitely not. This looseness is what gives hackers open doors to lots of systems. And this is why Linux is now rewriting a lot of its core systems in Rust from C and C++. Microsoft is doing the same thing with the Windows operating system. But this is a very slow process as there's far fewer Rust programmers than C/C++ programmers, so it's a slow slog.

If you know anyone who says they want to be a programmer, and they're serious about it, Rust and systems programming would be a very financially rewarding line to explore. Hard work, but well-paying.

https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/31/microsoft_seeks_rust_developers/

Comments

[paserbyp]

AI?

[thewayne]

Hmmm.  I don't know how much work MS is doing on AI themselves: they're heavily invested in ChatGPT, they've given them literally a billion dollars or more and are using it for their Bard chat client.  I don't know what languages or development frameworks you use when working with AI systems, completely out of my field when I was in IT.

[paserbyp]

My question was due to fact that using AI for converting C# to Rust is more cheaper than hiring so many Rust developers.

Indeed, next question will be sustaining and here AI should help also. Otherwise training developers on Rust instead of C# doesn’t helps at all.

[thewayne]

Ah, gotcha. I'd misconstrued your reply.

I made a post within the last month or so about programmers using AI to help them generate code. When surveyed, they thought they were producing more secure code. When the code was analyzed, the code was found to be less secure. I have a feeling that having an LLM just straight convert code between the two languages would be even worse.

[arlie]

Last I heard, the code quality to be expected from AI systems was about on par with the kind of untalented student who cuts and pastes snippets from multiple chunks of example code they found on the net. Don't be surprised if the same variable has different names at different places in the same routine, and error handling is missing.

That was about a year ago. Some developers found it helpful to give them an initial draft to correct. (The way I think, that wouldn't work for me; I find harder to spot missing code than to write the code correctly in the first place.)

Has it improved enough to be reliable yet? In particular, reliable enough to replace something that's already working, with a goal of improving quality?!

[paserbyp]

I don’t buy about secure code issue only because I saw bunch of code analyzers which automate search for security holes. AI could use it and fix it without any issues.

[paserbyp]

Unfortunately, in my long carrier in software development, I can see how the code quality degradation increase with time pass on. So, indeed the AI code quality is an issue right now, but with time it will increase dramatically.

[disneydream06]

I assume that's not the Rust movie in the news. :o
Hugs, Jon

[thewayne]

Nope, not the movie that had a tragic and fatal accidental shooting a couple of years ago, which was filming in northern New Mexico.  It's a programming language.  Right up your field!

[silveradept]

I don't know enough about Rust to say with certainty, but does Rust work well for people who are already trained in C / C++, with similar syntaxes and thought processes?

[thewayne]

My C/C++ knowledge is truly ancient, and my Rust knowledge is nigh nonexistent.  I can't really say.  As a rule, a well-trained programmer can pick up new languages fairly easily, but the devil is in the details.  There's always new stuff to learn when you try to pick up a new language.  When I started learning programming, I had a class or two in systems analysis and design.  THEN I started learning programming languages.  Speaking to the same teacher a decade or so later, the systems analysis and design class had gone away and she had to teach that in addition to the programming language, which I think is a poor way to do things.