Why is D unpopular?

[Adam D Ruppe]

On Thursday, 12 May 2022 at 03:43:50 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> You should mention that ImportC supports C constructs that are 
> not expressible in D, such as _Generic and bitfields.

I've been using D for 15 years across a variety of applications, 
including making drivers to interface with esoteric hardware. 
Those have never been useful.

C bitfields are useless even in C for hardware work, unless you 
lock into proprietary compiler, since the layout is undefined. 
You're much better off just taking out the spec sheet and using 
the | and & operators.

> C interoperability is a major barrier to using D.

D is very good at C interoperability. You have a bad habit of 
spreading misinformation about D. Why would someone use it if its 
own creator thinks it sucks?

But in reality, D is a very good language that makes accessing C 
code very easy.

> The trouble comes when those header files change, you've got to 
> figure out what changed and update those hand-translated files.

That's not really hard when they change in one place. You can do 
cherry-pick merge and be done with it in little time. Stable APIs 
are a very small investment with big returns in D.

It is hard though when you are trying to match the version on the 
user's computer, since dstep's 99% translation may not be good 
enough and a pre-made packaged thing may not match.

This is where importC can win - matching what's on the build 
system automatically. It isn't there yet though.