[robotiamsowhat]

So? Perhaps his kid will hkac MINIX. According to wiki page[1], there is only 6000 lines in its kernel. Not everybody has to start by cakhing a monolith. As long as there are smaller things.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MINIX_3#Reduce_kernel_size

EDIT: Yes, Linux kernel slowly approaches point when gigabyte of source is a long gone story of a past. I doubt there anybody out there who can say they actually understand the whole of it. And this is probably bad for a lot of reasons, of which being not accessible to a beginner is one of the smallest concern.

EDIT2: Even more so for hardware which is harder to investigate under the hood and probably much less understood - when was the last time when you could claim to have inner mental model of your computer and software on it?