Microsoft Project: Verona

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

On Sunday, 8 December 2019 at 10:36:50 UTC, IGotD- wrote:
> I wonder why Microsoft never tinkered with D for this purpose. 
> Was it the garbage collector that made them avoid D after all 
> these years?

Probably, if D was on the radar, but you only need to go a few 
years back to see a MS that seemed to want to evolve C# to a 
system programming language, and cut back on development of their 
own C++ compiler (and had ditched newer versions of C). So being 
open to outside tech is a new thing for MS...

The MS leadership is probably coming to an understanding that 
business applications will move to the cloud/web and that the 
Windows hegemony is over. So, they try to gain back developer 
trust that was lost in the 90s by demonstrating a friendly 
relationship to open source? I think the attitude at the top has 
changed and therefore people further down the hierarchy feel more 
encouraged to think outside the MS box?

Since Microsoft internally has had issues with memory safety then 
Rust's main selling point probably made it easier to catch the 
ears of those who make decisions at MS?

But you could also think about it in terms of recruiting.  If the 
kind of developers they want are drawn to Rust, then why not 
follow the crowd?