What were some of your biggest breakthroughs while learning D?

[norm]

On Tuesday, 6 July 2021 at 20:53:12 UTC, Dylan Graham wrote:
> [Inspiration from this r/C_Programming 
> post](https://www.reddit.com/r/C_Programming/comments/oeoq82/what_were_some_of_your_biggest_breakthroughs/)
>
> What's something you learnt or realised, a habit you developed, 
> something you read or project you worked on that helped 
> accelerate your understanding and/or productivity in D?
>
> For example, mixin templates finally clicking and you realise 
> how to use them in your code base. Stuff like that.

D really did change how I approach programming tasks in any 
language.

D templates with CTFE
D syntax; `!` for templates, UFCS, optional parenthesis

These features were a game changer for me because I could finally 
see through the syntax to semantics and I could easily create 
more fluent and monadic-like interfaces in my own code. C++ never 
had this clarity and for me personally it was always a muddy 
quagmire of Type\<typename T::SomeVector\<etc\<etc>>>.

With a better understanding of templates I started thinking in 
terms of functional types instead of just values and data 
structures, which was universal to all programming languages, 
even dynamically typed languages like Python.