Is D Dead?

[Kenneth Dallmann]

On Monday, 13 September 2021 at 20:04:01 UTC, IGotD- wrote:
> On Monday, 13 September 2021 at 18:31:59 UTC, Kenneth Dallmann 
> wrote:
>>
>> C has been around for a long time and is the de facto language 
>> of almost everything. To my understanding, Rust and D are the 
>> only two languages that can compete.
>>
>
> It's a little bit more than that. Contenders to C are
>
> C++
> D
> Rust
> Nim
> Zig
>
> My criteria is that the languages work on bare metal with 
> minimum library support. Some made Go work with small embedded 
> systems but still requires a runtime so I don't consider Go to 
> be a contender. D barely qualifies for this category as there 
> are so many library functions that require GC. If betterC 
> didn't exist I would have excluded D.


Yeah, C++ is a contender.  I don't know about Nim or Zig.
C++ is visually displeasing to some, that's why I don't like it.

I'm no expert, but I believe that Rust and D are sharing opposite 
strengths and
weaknesses.

Rust could be a good alternative to C, but like C it doesn't have 
a full set
of OOP features.

D has a full set of OOP features, but it may not play as well 
with pointers and
bare metal code as Rust.

Rust or C for absolute minimal runtime and most control and D or 
C++ for OOP.

C++ is my least favorite.

D is like if Java and C had a baby.   It has the high level 
features that make
interpreted languages easy and memory safe to write but also 
pointers.

It seems like those two things can be a bad mix though.

There might be some potholes in the design of D.  I think if I 
were to design
something like D I would follow Rust's example for memory 
management, and then
add in GC as an optional feature.