Transcription
So, I thought we could finally end 2025. I thought we were done, okay? Because 2025 is almost over, and I thought the news would just kind of slow down for this nice Christmas and New Year season. But no, because Microsoft decided just one more L for 2025 is what it needed to complete this calendar. Of course, this L comes courtesy of the land of L's, LinkedIn. Which, by the way, I do want to sidebar for a quick second. Microsoft owning the lamest social network. There's just there's something there. I don't know what the joke is, but it is very, very funny.
So, after an unhinged post, what happens? There's a follow-up post that somehow makes it worse. I I can't even believe what is happening right now. Silence. A distinguished engineer is speaking. Now, I want you to close your eyes while this distinguished engineer speaks, and I want you just to imagine what he's saying in your head. Okay? No cheating. Don't read along.
"My goal is to eliminate every line of C and C++ from Microsoft by 2030. Our strategy is to combine AI and algorithms to rewrite Microsoft's largest code bases."
Now, Microsoft obviously has some of the largest C/ C++ code bases in the world. So, how do you think they're going to be able to do that between Twix now and 2030, which is not that far away? Our northstar is one engineer, one month, 1 million lines of code. That's right. They need one engineer with the assistance of AI and algorithms to be able to process one line of code every 3 seconds every month for the next four some years straight.
This idea of rewriting a ton of code in Rust with the assistance of AI and algorithms. I already have a lot to say on that. But this idea that you can go that fast in a rewrite, like brother, I don't even think you understand your own product. It's no secret that I use Windows for all my video production. And honestly, I need to due to the some hardware restrictions. And before but before the little Linux Andes come and be like, "Hey, why don't you just write your own firmware?" Shut the hell up, okay? I'm not going to just spend the next month rewriting firmware just so I can record some videos with Arch Linux. Shut up.
Anyways, I was forced to update Windows just a couple of days ago. And guess what? Everything just crashed non-stop. I could not record or stream for longer than 15 minutes without the entire computer freezing. And I had to roll back. After I rolled back, everything worked fine. Okay. I am not convinced that Microsoft has any clue what's going on anymore in their operating system. And you're telling me they're going to rewrite everything with one engineer, 1 million lines of code in one month, every month for the next 48 to 60 months straight. Hey, I I just don't believe you.
And also, just like I mean, can we sidebar for another second here? C++ and Rust like they express the same problem very differently. There's things you can do in C++ that you can't do in Rust and vice versa. They are not the same. This is not a onetoone transfer like how you would solve a problem in one is very different than how you would solve a problem in the other which makes going the speed of a million lines of code a month. It just feels impossible unless if you're producing absolute horse just I'm trying not to curse. Okay. What noun/adjective should I use in combination to describe the Windows codebase? I don't even know. But the code base that would come out of algorithms and AI from the Windows codebase would be okay. Horseshit. I can't I can't even help it.
Not only that, but an operating system needs to be kind of high performance. And so high performance Rust versus like my Rust, the Mr. Clone and Arc Mutex, they're going to look a lot different and they're significantly harder to write. Again, 1 million lines doubting. Now, in my head, pseudo RS shouldn't be that hard to rewrite yet. It's going to take months upon months of effort of just fixing bugs and inconsistencies between pseudo and pseudo RS. Not to mention all the pitfalls that pseudo RS has already fallen into and had to scrape themselves back out of. And we can all agree that pseudo RS is significantly easier than an operating system. So when I hear that we're just going to rewrite the largest code bases at Microsoft IE Windows by 2030, call me skeptical. I don't I don't believe you. I just don't believe that you can even write your current operating system, let alone rewrite it. I don't think you need another atbat. I think you've already struck out.
Okay, but this is where the story takes an even weirder turn. Right now, remember that time that I just got done saying how we're going to eliminate every single line of C and C++ from Microsoft by 2030. Well, it turns out that does not include Windows. Okay, silence. A distinguished engineer is speaking again.
"It appears my post generated far more attention than I intended with a lot of speculative reading between the lines. Just to clarify, Windows is not being rewritten in Rust with AI."
Oh, sorry. I didn't realize I was reading between the lines. Yeah, I I must have accidentally read between this line and this line to think that Windows was being rewritten because I I I don't know about you guys, but when I hear the phrase, "My goal is to eliminate every line of C and C++," I think of every line as every line. I guess I'm reading between the lines on that one, thinking when you say the largest code bases and every line of C++ and C, you don't you mean Windows. Sorry, I didn't I didn't realize that.
Imagine writing that for a second. You go on the internet. You say you're hiring a position. You say you're going to rewrite every line of code and then you get upset and call people conspiracy theorists. When I had you close your eyes and I read that statement, did you think Windows? Yes, you did. Cuz that's normal. This is expected behavior and to be called to be told I'm reading between twixed the lines. What is this?
At the end of the day, I really don't care what language Microsoft decides to use for their operating system. And if they are or are not using AI to rewrite their operating system in a different language. All I care about is that the thing can just work like at all. Can we just Can we just have something that runs consistently, say for a month? Somehow I'm using Arch Linux and I have less problems with wild amounts of bleeding edge driver updates than I do using Windows, which is supposed to be kind of the normie pathway. Honestly, I feel bad for normies because they have to debug more problems than I do.
You know what the worst part about this all is? I honestly don't think I can blame AI for this. I know the joke. I know the image. I get it. I've seen it like a hundred times. 30% of code is written by AI at Microsoft. That's a gamified statistic. Okay. How many people just using like Copilot or Super Maven as an autocomplete? How much of your code would be written by AI just with that? Well, a pretty decent proportion. I mean, hell, if you just use an LSP, what percentage of your code is written by an AI? A series of if statements that ran by the computer and give you text to generate? A decent portion. So when I see all these problems and all this, I don't honestly see a failure of using AI. I see a failure of leadership. I see a failure of technical excellence, but instead trying to shoehorn all these features into an operating system that hasn't had the time to ship the fixes alongside of it. And it's just becoming a progressively less and less stable platform. a platform that's being foisted upon with ads, with running JavaScript in the start menu, with now all this co-pilot and AI integration. So much change and so little effort into actually making the platform stable.
So, do I believe at all that someone could hit 1 million lines transfer from C/ C++ into Rust in one month? No, I don't believe it. It would be bugridden. It would be horribly written and it would be a disaster of a biblical proportion.
Anyways, thought I would just update you once more on this whole Microsoft dude. I swear it is just like a stream of just the dumbest things I've ever heard in my entire lifetime. And it's absolutely wonderful. Thank you Microsoft for giving me generational wealth with these type of updates. The name is the Primogen. Hey, is that HTTP? Get that out of here. That's not how we order coffee. We order coffee via ssh terminal.shop. Yeah. You want a real experience. You want real coffee. You want awesome subscriptions so you never have to remember again. Oh, you want exclusive blends with exclusive coffee and exclusive content? Then check out Cron. You don't know what SSH is? >> Well, maybe the coffee is [music] not for you. [singing] Living dream.