Microsoft plans to eliminate all C and C++ code across its major codebases by 2030, replacing it with Rust using AI-assisted, large-scale refactoring. "My goal is to eliminate every line of C and C++ from Microsoft by 2030," Microsoft Distinguished Engineer Galen Hunt writes in a post on LinkedIn. "Our strategy is to combine AI and Algorithms to rewrite Microsoft's largest codebases. Our North Star is '1 engineer, 1 month, 1 million lines of code.' To accomplish this previously unimaginable task, we've built a powerful code processing infrastructure. Our algorithmic infrastructure creates a scalable graph over source code at scale. Our AI processing infrastructure then enables us to apply AI agents, guided by algorithms, to make code modifications at scale. The core of this infrastructure is already operating at scale on problems such as code understanding."

Hunt says he's looking to hire a Principal Software Engineer to help with this effort. "The purpose of this Principal Software Engineer role is to help us evolve and augment our infrastructure to enable translating Microsoft's largest C and C++ systems to Rust," writes Hunt. "A critical requirement for this role is experience building production quality systems-level code in Rust -- preferably at least 3 years of experience writing systems-level code in Rust. Compiler, database, or OS implementation experience is highly desired. While compiler implementation experience is not required to apply, the willingness to acquire that experience in our team is required."

A couple of weeks ago you had the chance to ask Khan Academy lead developer Ben Kamens about the future of online education and the academy itself. Below you'll find his answers to the questions we sent and a few extra that he found interesting.

Dr.Dubious DDQ asks: "With all the recent Microsoft(r) news, I see a lot of the usual complaining about Microsoft's unfair 'embrace and extend' practices. I do my own fair share of this, but I'd much rather actually *do* something about it.At the risk of prompting cries of 'No! That will only make them stronger!', I find myself asking: How possible is it to 'transparently' replace Microsoft-brand services with other (preferably, but not necessarily, Open Source) services (rather than flatly demanding migration away from all things MS)? Or put the other way around, what tweaks would have to be made to existing, standard services to make them 'bug-for-bug compatible' with MS versions, particularly OUTSIDE of the context of SMB/Samba, which is an already-obvious example?" While there are definite reasons why such an effort may be worthwhile, it is also possible that Microsoft could attempt to make legal attacks at such projects...even though they are designed with software interoperability in mind. Precedents in support of this idea do exist, such as: ReactOS and even standard Open Source openings like Gnumeric.

Saqib Ali asks: "Office 2003 Pro as been out for quite some time now. I was wondering how many large corporations have been to able use it as a XML authoring / modelling application? I have been involved in evaluation of several XML authoring / modelling applications and am planning to evaluate Office 2003 for it's XML authoring capabilities. The scope of my evaluation is limited to capabilities required for authoring technical documentation, preferably in DocBook XML. Is there anything I should keep in mind before starting the evaluation? One feature that I like about Office 2003 is its support for WebDAV. Our homebrewed CMS (Content Management Systems) supports WebDAV, which makes publishing the content a breeze. Except for OpenOffice, I haven't seen any other XML authoring application that has support for WebDAV. Any suggestions?"

Saqib Ali asks: "A DTD (Documentation Type Definition) defines the document structure with a list of legal elements. DocBook DTD is being widely used in creating Linux related documentation. However I am looking for a XML DTD that is more suited to internal IT documentation, and easy to learn and use. Preferably I would like to use a DTD that can be used with OpenOffice. What DTDs are other Slashdot readers using for for internal IT documentation? I have created documentation using DocBook DTD and hosted them on a Apache Cocoon . Cocoon lets me transform the XML to HTML or PDF. I would like to keep the same backend infrastructure (i.e. Cocoon) but try out other DTDs that are suited for IT related documentation. Any ideas?"

Aldurn asks: "Recently, I've come into a living situation where having my rather loud computer continuously running is distinctly suboptimal. In order to maintain my current email address and webserver, in addition to running a decent set of iptables rules for the house, I decided to buy a Mini-ITX-based server. Currently, /dev/hda is running on a CompactFlash card, but I realize that this probably isn't the best thing to do when running a mail server, due to limitations of the media with regards to the number of writes possible over the lifetime of the media. I'm looking to add another storage medium to the device for /var in order to maintain the logs, as well as for mail storage and other bits that like to live in that directory. The media doesn't have to be terribly large (preferably at least 64 MB), and can be connected through IDE, USB, the floppy connector, or through the network. The end goal of this exercise is simply to prevent my poor CF card from dying an early death from continuous writes. What do you suggest for such a situation?"

TheMaccLads asks: "I've recently joined a new C++ project, and it's in a terrible state. There are 100-odd source directories, dozens of libraries, and a couple of dozen executables and DLLs. Some executables pull in (i.e. compile themselves) the occasional source file from a library, instead of using the libraries. My job is to port a subset to unix, but I need a tool to visualise all the relationships between directories, projects, libraries, and so on, because my brain will overheat soon otherwise. Preferably a tool that will do it by parsing the MS Dev studio projects and workspaces, but if I have to write it myself in Perl, I will! Anyone know of any tools? Or suggest an approach?"