The Linux developer pool will increase. C programmers are mostly old hands these days, and they're a dying breed. Rust opens the possibility of kernel development to younger or less experienced programmers, many of whom only have had experience with modern languages and frameworks.

I program in C and I'm in my early 20s now and still create new projects or write C on a regular basis.

This is false

Thanks for sharing the opinion. However could you elaborate why you think it's false?

...even worse.

If you can't see how having inexperienced programmers writing code that is guaranteed memory-safe beats having world-class expert programmers writing dangerous code because even world-class expert programmers cannot wield C safely then why are you working in the field?

Is this a joke? Is the existing infrastructure built by countless geniuses in C not working at all? Do you think inexperienced programmers could build it given a "safer instrument"? How many junior devs understand intricacies of basic OS-level locking, not mentioning Paxos and other scary algorithms whose formal correctness can't be even proven in theory?

> Is this a joke? Is the existing infrastructure built by countless geniuses in C not working at all?

Given all the CVEs that arise due to buffer overflows and UAF, it's not working very well. Safe Rust makes those classes of problems Just Go Away.

> Do you think inexperienced programmers could build it given a "safer instrument"?

Inexperienced programmers can get started without the near vertical learning curve C presents. Just wrapping your head around pointers scares many programmers off, and even once you grok pointers, attempting to use them correctly is a minefield. This makes kernel hacking daunting for the average dev. Rust gives them an onramp.

> How many junior devs understand intricacies of basic OS-level locking, not mentioning Paxos and other scary algorithms whose formal correctness can't be even proven in theory?

Not very many... but junior devs don't need to work on that stuff. They can make more peripheral contributions -- fixes to device or file system drivers, etc. -- while they're building their skills, completely confident that they will not make a class of stupid but very common and dangerous memory errors. Not so with C! As I said, not even great programmers can be relied upon to write safe C code -- the model presented by C is just that abstruse.