Why is D unpopular?

[Walter Bright]

On 5/1/2022 12:33 AM, Paulo Pinto wrote:
> First Lisp compiler was in 1960's....

I know. And Lisp 1 was an interpreter, page 9 of:

http://jmc.stanford.edu/articles/lisp/lisp.pdf

I know perfectly well that interpreters have long evolved to generate native 
code. I did one myself (Symantec's Java) in the 1990s. I considered it for the 
Javascript interpreter I wrote around 2000.

I've also seen C interpreters in the 1980s. Why native C compilers still didn't 
add interpretation to functions is a mystery. The UCSD P-System had interpreting 
compilers for C, Pascal, and Fortran in the 1980s.

***** Note that even the C interpreters would reject things like: `int 
a[foo()];` i.e. CTFE was not part of the *language* semantics. *****

After D did it, suddenly the other native languages moved in that direction. If 
you have another explanation for the timing, I'd like to hear it.

If you have a reference to a natively compiled language specification that had 
compile-time constant-expressions that could interpret a function at compile 
time, I'd appreciate it. No, not an interpreted language that JITs whatever it can.

Thanks!