Why is D unpopular?

[Bruce Carneal]

On Friday, 5 November 2021 at 13:42:44 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
wrote:
> On Friday, 5 November 2021 at 13:10:58 UTC, Guillaume Piolat 
> wrote:
>> Interesting point of view because obviously it isn't the point 
>> of view of many in the D community. I'll spare you the details 
>> but it is very possible D outperform those in their specialty.
>
> I think we need to embrace the idea that there is no single 
> factor, and that D cannot best languages with critical mass in 
> their speciality niches.
>

I agree that language evaluation occurs in a multi-dimensional 
space (no single factor) but I believe that D has already 
"bested" C++, to pick one competitor, in several ways.  For 
example, in performance critical areas it has allowed 
individuals, or small groups, to quickly develop software that 
equals or outperforms the world's best.  Roughly a (hard 
performance / development cost) metric.

For me D is significantly better than my previous favorite in the 
performance space (C++/CUDA).  The accessible and powerful 
metaprogramming capabilities let you get to the metal quickly 
with code that is quite readable.  Unittest, modules, nested 
functions, ... are also very helpful.

I imagine the Mir developer(s) might feel the same way. I don't 
know exactly how much Intel has spent on the portion of MKL that 
competes with Mir, but I would be quite surprised if it were less 
than 10X that spent on Mir.

Finally, note that "besting" a particular language in some way(s) 
does not imply "besting" that language in terms of uptake but it 
does mean that for those who weight those factors heavily, D is 
the right choice.