From the Editor’s Desk: The Problem is You (Premium)

In October 2022, Linus Torvalds merged the first Rust code into the Linux kernel. It's been a firestorm of controversy ever since. And that controversy just claimed its latest victim, Asahi Linux lead Hector Martin, who has stepped down from that project and will no longer contribute Linux kernel code because of separate run-ins with kernel maintainer Christoph Hellwig and Torvalds himself.

From the outside, it may seem odd that OS kernel development could be, in any way, controversial. But Torvalds, for all his contributions to the industry, has always been a bit controversial, and the system he's put in place to keep the kernel moving forward mirror his personality in the same way that other industry icons like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs influenced their respective organizations.

Torvalds' involvement in this episode is negative and unfortunate. But it's also beside the point. The real story here isn't found in specific rebukes or hurt feelings. This is really about a problem our industry has faced since its inception. It's about the awkward generational transitions that occur when older, more experienced technical people suddenly stop evolving with the times, become change averse, and push back against younger, for forward-leaning colleagues. It is, in other words, about psychology, not technology.

But we have to understand the technology to understand this story.

As you may know, Rust is a C-like, memory-safe programming language that's been embraced by systems programmers for its unique blend of safety, performance, and capabilities. It's so good, and so popular, that it's triggered a long-overdue transition away from the popular but unsafe and bug-prone C programming language. It's especially ideal for OS kernel and driver development that Torvalds adopted it for Linux kernel development in 2022. Microsoft followed in 2023, with Azure CTO Mark Russinovich declaring an end to new C and C++ development. Going forward, all new kernel code for Windows and Azure should be written in Rust, he said.

This seems straightforward. Rust delivers all the benefits of C with none of the downsides, so there's no compromise. Clearly, we can move on to a safer, Rust-based future and collectively reap the benefits. I imagine a future in which OS developers use AI to rewrite code blocks one-by-one in Rust in a perfect act of code refactoring with literally no downsides.

There's just one problem, and I'm looking at you, graybeard. You know who I mean. The perhaps overly confident middle-aged and older senior developers who in this case stand between us and that safer future. In a pattern that replays itself everywhere in technology and at all times, these older developers, who grew up on C and now understand it just as well as they understand their native spoken languages, are resistant to change. And they've been fighting against the addition of Rust to their beloved codebases since this shift began.

Aside from the Torvalds angle, we...