Simple performance question from a newcomer

[ixid via Digitalmars-d-learn]

On Monday, 22 February 2016 at 15:43:23 UTC, dextorious wrote:
> I do have to wonder, however, about the default settings of dub 
> in this case. Having gone through its documentation, I might 
> still not have guessed to try the compiler options you 
> provided, thereby losing out on a 2-3x performance improvement. 
> What build options did you use in your dub.json that it managed 
> to translate to the correct compiler switches?

Your experience is exactly what the D community needs to get 
right. You've come in as an interested user with patience and 
initially D has offered slightly disappointing performance for 
both technical reasons and because of the different compilers. 
You've gotten to the right place in the end but we need point A 
to point B to be a lot smoother and more obvious so more people 
get a good initial impression of D.

Every D user thread seems to go like this- someone starts with 
DMD, they then struggle a little and hopefully get LDC working 
with a list of slightly obscure compiler switches offered. A 
standard algorithm performs disappointingly for somewhat valid 
technical reasons and more clunky alternatives are then deployed. 
We really need to standard algorithms to be fast and perhaps have 
separate ones for perfect technical accuracy.

What are your thoughts on D now? What would have helped you get 
to the right place much faster?