Paul Krill
Editor at Large

Microsoft forms Rust language team

news
Feb 1, 20212 mins

The company seeks software engineers to work on improving Rust compilers and tools for internal product groups, and to interact with the broader Rust community.

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Credit: cortixxx

Microsoft is building a team to support Rust language usage and to collaborate with the community of software developers that has gathered around the open source programming language.

While Microsoft’s Rust team would support Rust usage within Microsoft, the company does plan to pursue opportunities to participate in the Rust community, working closely on the compiler, core tools, documentation, and other aspects of the language, Microsoft said in a statement.

The Mozilla-sponsored Rust language offers benefits in security and trust, enabling development of secure, high-performance software systems, Microsoft said. The company has posted a job advertisement for software engineers to work with the Microsoft Developer Division on improving Rust compilers and tools for internal product groups on Windows and Linux.

Microsoft has taken a great interest in Rust, including exploring the use of Rust for building new components and rewriting legacy ones. With its Win32 Metadata project the company aims to make Windows APIs more accessible to Rust and other languages.

Designed for runtime speed, memory safety, and parallelism, Rust has been used in projects such as the Servo browser engine and the Deno JavaScript/TypeScript runtime. It is currently ranked 16th in the Pypl Index of programming language popularity.

Paul Krill

Paul Krill is editor at large at InfoWorld. Paul has been covering computer technology as a news and feature reporter for more than 35 years, including 30 years at InfoWorld. He has specialized in coverage of software development tools and technologies since the 1990s, and he continues to lead InfoWorld’s news coverage of software development platforms including Java and .NET and programming languages including JavaScript, TypeScript, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, and Go. Long trusted as a reporter who prioritizes accuracy, integrity, and the best interests of readers, Paul is sought out by technology companies and industry organizations who want to reach InfoWorld’s audience of software developers and other information technology professionals. Paul has won a “Best Technology News Coverage” award from IDG.

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