Why is D unpopular?

[forkit]

On Tuesday, 31 May 2022 at 18:42:49 UTC, yl wrote:
> On Tuesday, 31 May 2022 at 02:47:21 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
>> On Tue, May 31, 2022 at 02:07:53AM +0000, forkit via
>>> With a single compiler, implementation defined behaviours, 
>>> which would of course exist, are contained to the 'one' 
>>> compiler, which has obvious benefits for developers, and 
>>> their customers (and C# is a prime example), as well as the 
>>> compiler developers and the language designers.
>>
>> The disadvantage is that the code will rely on said 
>> implementation-defined behaviours, resulting in vendor lock-in.
>
> Apart from that, one can use multiple compilers to check if 
> his/her code are standard compliant. Sometimes, I can find 
> problems/bugs in my code that way, since different compilers 
> provide different error / warning messages (esp. C++). If my 
> code can pass all the compilers without warnings, my code is 
> more likely to be robust.

On the otherhand, when there is one compiler, which everyone 
uses, then that compiler has the opportunity to have been very 
well tested, over time, and hence vastly more reliable.

This is because users/developers/contributors would all 
using/contributing to the same source base, and hence, over-time, 
that source base is far better off because it doesn't have to 
compete with other source repositories.

So there are real world benefits in there being one compiler to 
rule them all.

Not that I'm making the argument for there to be one compiler, 
cause i'm not against multiple compilers - especially for certain 
languagers (like C/C++).