[Info-vax] VAX Macro to C conversion

[Terry Kennedy]

On Thursday, July 18, 2019 at 9:45:35 PM UTC-4, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> Note that MS supposedly are considering towards Rust:
> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/07/18/microsoft_argues_for_memorysafe_languages_hints_at_move_from_c_to_rust

That's fine for new in-house development, but as the article points out Microsoft uses a lot of Open Source and getting those developers to change is unlikely at best. I also suspect that Microsoft is not going to do wholesale rewrites of things in Rust. Certain frequently-exploited exposed surfaces* may get the rewrite, but I expect Microsoft will then sit back, wait and see to determine if that actually helped before committing resources to rewriting other components. Plus, any complete subsystems that are converted will need to undergo performance and regression testing (probably by customers in the field) so they should hopefully be sensitive to that as well.

* For example, see "One font vulnerability to rule them all" as an example of a nice big exposed surface, although not necessarly related to C.