Reddit: why aren't people using D?

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Rainer Deyke" <rainerd at eldwood.com> wrote in message 
news:h49153$2pbq$1 at digitalmars.com...
> Walter Bright wrote:
>> My experience with C++ people sticking with it is they are so used to
>> the problems they no longer see them. To me it's like the mess in one's
>> house. One doesn't notice it until going on a vacation (i.e. learning a
>> another language), having one's hotel room cleaned every day, then
>> coming home and suddenly seeing how untidy it is <g>.
>
> I want to throw these words back at you, because my first impression of
> D was "the bastard child of C++ and Java, with a random assortment of
> new features thrown in without rhyme or reason".  D is many things, but
> a simple and elegant language it is not.  (This is not a major problem
> to me, really.  I can live with messy languages.  I can live with C++.
> But to think that D is a massive improvement in this area requires a
> special sort of perspective.)
>

D is certainly a bit messy compared to many languages, but I have a very 
difficult time imagining how it could be considered messy in comparison to 
C++. C++ has decades of accumulated cruft from trying to cram in 
usable-but-clumbsy new features around piles of backwards-compatible 
anachronisms. The mess in D barely begins until a level that's far beyond 
where C++ takes you before getting messy. And this cannot be a result of me 
having become more accustomed to D than C++ - I've considered C++ the 
messiest non-dead language I know of since before I came across D, and even 
since the last time I was using C++ as my primary language.