Because Microsoft has written several OSes in C# variants, with AOT compilation to native code.

They then took some of those learnings into Windows 8.x, UWP .NET Native and C# 7.x and 8.0 low level memory primitives.

A tracing GC, coupled with value types and manual memory management in unsafe code makes plenty of sense and has been done multiple times since Xerox PARC days.

The only thing missing is a company having the guts to push it no matter what. A bit like Google is doing with ChromeOS and Android.

>The only thing missing is a company having the guts to push it no matter what. A bit like Google is doing with ChromeOS and Android.

This. I see a lot of the so call new idea and hype aren't actually new at all. It didn't succeed simply because it never got the investment or drive until it has sustainable critical mass. And every few years or decades we start to reinvent the wheel by new generation of developers.

Especially in tech industry where you are considered old if you are over 40, but in reality it is the age you finally see all the ideas keeps getting recycled again by newer generation and you could finally say meh, no.

There’s nothing intrinsic to rust that makes it better suited for “foundational components” over anywhere else in the stack. Just because it’s capable of being used lower down doesn’t mean it’s a better or worse language higher up the stack. It’s probably got all the APIs or great crates you need for your work.

It’s not a language “for” anything per se, it’s ergonomic anywhere up the stack.

> There’s nothing intrinsic to rust that makes it better suited for “foundational components” over anywhere else in the stack.

Actually, there is, not having a GC means you can better reason about stack/heap memory usage. That matters for performance critical and things like embedded systems where you might not even use malloc() in c.

I think I may not have phrased it well, I agree with you, it’s better than many other languages for low level software development. What I’m saying is there’s nothing that makes it worse for high-level software development.

Depends on how your mind works really... I know a lot of devs that cannot break out of C# class and enterprise app thinking. I happen to like JS for a lot of workflows. It really depends on mindset.

Been learning rust for a few months now and really enjoying it so far... waiting on the new async stuff to firm up a little before continuing.

Because explicit memory management has a higher cognitive overhead than implicit memory management, a GC-based language is more suitable higher up the stack.

Rust memory management is in fact implicit. Sometimes you have to be explicit about lifetimes, but the two are not the same.

For that matter, wouldn't be too surprised to see MS publish crates that give nicer interfaces to Windows internals or even linux, sql, azure or other platforms access.

Because there is plenty of higher level systems interfaces that could be just as well written in C++, C# or Rust. Just because rust works on low-level problem spaces, doesn't mean it doesn't work higher up. Also, MS could very well create some of the applications in question with C# as well.