Why I chose D over Ada and Eiffel

[Ramon]

Well, I had good reason not to mention Ariane5. Looking at that
particular problem, D would have helped, too and roughly in the
same way as Eiffel that is, by doing some debug runs with the
current (Ariane5) values; then dbc could have helped spot the
problem.

I did, btw, not at all intend to bash Ada. From what I can see,
Ada is well alive and has considerably more users than Eiffel
and, at least for the time being, D. Looking at the type of user,
usually not newbies but experienced software engineers, tells me
that Ada is alive and well for a reason.

As for language comparisons or shoot outs, I don't care that
much. I tend to look whether a language has a sound
implementation of some of the major concepts and paradigms,
whether it's consistent(ly implemented) and whether it has
dropped out of academia or rather had an evolutionary birth,
preferably with lots of experience behind it.

And yes, one point I keep in mind is what (in my minds eye) is
the point to be learned from Ariane5: Humans aren't good at micro
bookkeeping large numbers of details - computers are.