Why is D unpopular?

[Adam D Ruppe]

On Tuesday, 24 May 2022 at 12:51:32 UTC, Siarhei Siamashka wrote:
> Please educate yourself about the @safe attribute.

Please refrain from uninformed personal attacks.

You might notice I said "default safety features". Here's the 
facts.

D's default: significant safety *by default*, eliminating over 
90% of C-specific bugs (which btw are a minority of actual bugs; 
it is important to remember to keep it in perspective). Where it 
is necessary to bypass these important checks, which btw is a 
small minority of places, you can use .ptr locally, after 
verifying correctness, to disable it selectively while keeping 
safety by default.

By contrast, once you choose to use -release, you get *security 
holes* by default, which is the opposite of what you want when 
actually releasing code to real users! You can then opt back into 
minimum safety checks (which you want in a vast majority of 
places) on a case-by-case basis by adding `@safe` (...until some 
poor user is told to use -boundscheck=off but that's on them, at 
least that switch sounds like you should think twice, unlike 
-release which sounds harmless while being anything but). The 
compiler is likely to fight you throughout this process as other 
library authors must also remember to opt into it.


A programming language ought to align with safety and common use. 
-release does the opposite of this, with very little warning.

Never using it, on the other hand, aligns with these virtues, 
while still letting you very conveniently bypass checks when it 
is genuinely necessary and beneficial.