[userbinator]

Why do people persist in this belief that a kernel is some mystical realm where software-engineering principles don't apply?

Why do you think that these "software-engineering principles" should apply? I think the fact that the Linux kernel works, and it works quite well, is strong enough evidence that they don't matter.

the people who worked on the AIX and Solaris kernels still knew and applied this stuff.

I don't know about AIX, but there's a reason Solaris has been called "Slowlaris"...

If an RTOS for tiny devices can have decent modularity

But is that modularity actually necessary? I've worked with plenty of overly complex applications that were far more inefficient and harder to understand as a whole than they could be, and most of them were the result of dogmatic adherence to principles of modularity, encapsulation, extensibility, etc. (none of which actually improved anything from the point of view of either the users nor the ones trying to figure out how everything works), so maybe that "anti-CS attitude" is a good thing after all...