Why is D unpopular?

[arco]

On Tuesday, 2 November 2021 at 17:27:25 UTC, Dr Machine Code 
wrote:
> It got [asked on 
> reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/d_language/comments/q74bzr/why_is_d_unpopular/) sub but for those that aren't active too, I'd like you opinions. Please don't get me wrong, I also love D, I've used it everywhere I can and I'd say it's my favourite language (yes I have one...) but I'm as as the reddit's OP, trying to understand why it's unpopular. Rust and Go seeming to be getting more and more users. I think it's due to large ecosystem and the big corporations with deep pockets that pushes them. But I'd like to know you all opinions

This is my first post here. I've been reading this for a long 
time out of general interest but since I never actually decided 
to try D, I though I could contribute my 2 cents to this topic.

In addition to all that has already been said, I think there are 
two fundamental issues. This first one is historic: for a long 
time, D was not open source, in an era where proprietary 
languages were long frowned upon. People expect a language and 
all its associated tools to be free, both as in speech and beer. 
D may not have been expensive and difficult to obtain like Ada 
was, but it was still probably a big detriment to its early 
adoption. By the time it was relicensed and truly open source 
compilers appeared, its launch window had closed and there were 
other languages around.

This brings me to the second point: perhaps D is simply based on 
the wrong idea. From my reading of the dlang forums it wants to 
be, if not all things to everyone, at least a general all-around 
language that can do more or less everything. The problem is that 
maybe this is not what the world wants. Most people are very 
happy to use different languages for different problems, and they 
will go for the one that is the best (for varying definitions of 
best) at something rather than one that is pretty good at lots of 
things. Today one can certainly do low level system programming 
in D, but Rust is a better systems language. One can develop 
microservices etc. in D, and it might be pretty good for that, 
but Go is better. D can even be used as a scripting language or 
one to drive high level logic, but Python is better for that.

To put it differently, the world doesn't seem to want another 
C++. Both Rust and Go came after D and enjoyed significant uptake 
in areas that overlap with D's. The key difference IMHO is that 
they both know not only what they need to provide to be good 
options for their selected application spaces, but also what they 
don't want to become and what is totally out of scope for them. I 
really believe that the latter part is as important, if not more, 
than the former, and if there is one feature that D is lacking to 
get more traction, it's probably this one: decide which rabbits 
it's not trying to chase.