Why is D unpopular?

[Paulo Pinto]

On Friday, 29 April 2022 at 19:44:09 UTC, max haughton wrote:
> On Friday, 29 April 2022 at 18:26:46 UTC, Paulo Pinto wrote:
>> On Friday, 29 April 2022 at 18:05:42 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>>> On 4/29/2022 10:00 AM, Paulo Pinto wrote:
>>>> On Friday, 29 April 2022 at 15:28:16 UTC, Walter Bright 
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> On 4/27/2022 8:59 AM, Satoshi wrote:
>>>>>> [...]
>>>>>
>>>>> Other languages have taken inspiration from D, such as 
>>>>> ranges and compile time expression evaluation.
>>>>>
>>>>> ....
>>>> 
>>>> Sorry, Lisp, ML, CLU and Smalltalk did it first, D was 
>>>> surely not the first in this regard.
>>>> 
>>>> Plenty of SIGPLAN papers on the subject.
>>>
>>> Those were interpreters first and added native code 
>>> generation later. D did is the other way around, and the 
>>> native code generating compilers started doing it soon 
>>> afterwards.
>>
>> Decades before D was even an idea.
>>
>> Again, SIGPLAN.
>
> Which papers?

Given that the point is compile time execution and ranges, with 
compiled code.

Lets start with Lisp macros and reduce ourselves to the first 
generation of Lisp compilers that were relatively known.

Interlisp-D at Xerox PARC, 
http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/interlisp_family,  1983.

Don't be deceived by the references to bytecode or vm, Dorado 
workstations used microcoded CPUs loaded on boot, hardly any 
different from modern Intel/AMD CPUs doing on the fly 
translations from CISC to their RISC internals.

But if you want to be pedantic about the very first Lisp compiler 
with macros support, it was created in 1962

https://web.archive.org/web/20201213195043/ftp://publications.ai.mit.edu/ai-publications/pdf/AIM-039.pdf

Or a version that is still in use, like Allegro Common, first 
release in 1985.

http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/common_lisp_family

Maybe Lisp isn't the thing, we can turn our attention to the ML 
linagage with MetaML (2000) or Template Haskell (2002), being two 
of most well known examples,

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304397500000530

https://userpages.uni-koblenz.de/~laemmel/TheEagle/dl/SheardPJ02.pdf

Switching gears to ranges, we have Smalltalk-80 collections as 
one possible example,

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/2409926_Interfaces_and_Specifications_for_the_Smalltalk-80_Collection_Classes