[blub]

I wonder why Linus would think that though, because when one considers how big the kernel already is, and that in e.g. 10 years the vast majority will still be written in C, which will be just as unmaintainable as it is today if not more and that those old hands will be even older... the inescapable conclusion is that the Linux kernel will become unmaintainable period.

I'm skeptical that introducing a new language, whatever that may be, would help. In the short term it will make things harder, since maintainers have to juggle two languages and in the long term, as long as the new language does not displace the old one the situation would not improve.