How I Came to Write D -- by Walter Bright

[Chris]

Walter: "I'll note here that working on stuff that I needed has 
fared quite a bit better than working on stuff that I was told 
others need."

This has also been my experience, that you should do what you 
feel is right, what really makes you happy. Had I heeded all the 
advice I've been given about how "useful" and "useless" this and 
that is, I wouldn't be where I am now. Practically everything I 
went for was considered "useless". I know far too many people who 
did what was once considered useful (i.e. "where the money is"), 
and ended up being completely unhappy. There will always be 
people like the C Guru (he probably wasn't one), but never mind 
them. Go where your heart says.

I would have liked to have a Java native compiler though, but 
hey, now we have D.