Why is D unpopular?

[Max Samukha]

On Monday, 2 May 2022 at 01:42:19 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

>
> A language designed for native compilation draws a hard 
> distinction between compile time and run time. You'll see this 
> in the grammar for the language, in the form of a 
> constant-expression for compile time, and just expression for 
> run time. The constant-expression does constant folding at 
> compile time. The runtime does not include a compiler.

Nope, Nemerle doesn't require a compiler runtime at runtime 
(however, you can include it if you need to). The Nemerle 
compiler compiles the const-expressions into a dll (yes, the 
target is bytecode, but it could be native code - it doesn't 
matter) and then loads the compiled code back and executes it *at 
compile time*. It could as well do interpretation the way D does. 
Both approaches have their pros and cons, but they do 
fundamentally the same thing.