Currently Microsoft has rewritten two main projects, DWriteCore and Win32 GDI, which contain some very old code. Win32 GDI was written in the late 80s and early 90s and was designed for the 286/386.
What language did Microsoft choose to do these rewrites in? Rust. Yes, that’s right, Rust.
GDI is at the core of painting and drawing on a Windows surface since the introduction of Windows 1.0 on November 20, 1985! It will be 40 years old in 2025. I turned 17, nine days after it shipped! 😳
That’s quite a history and a fair bit of legacy C to replace, HDC or HBITMAP anyone? Of course GDI has seen its fair share of changes in its history. Eventually becoming hardware accelerated.
I would love to see all this new Rust code and I wonder how much of it is unsafe to bridge the gap between older C code and the all new Rust code?
I wonder if Apple will ever rewrite any of its lower level OS code in Swift? 🤔