Why I chose D over Ada and Eiffel

[Ramon]

On Wednesday, 21 August 2013 at 16:35:17 UTC, Jacob Carlborg 
wrote:
> On 2013-08-21 15:54, Ramon wrote:
>
>> Reading through this forum, however, "performance" and not 
>> doing
>> anything that might negatively influence performce is what 
>> Mother
>> Mary is to Christians, very very holy.
>
> In many areas D chooses safety or convenience before 
> performance, compared with say C/C++. Examples:
>
> * All variables are default initialized
> * Garbage collector
> * All instance methods are virtual by default

You are right and I appreciate that progress (IMO). It does not 
exclude, however, a strong, sometimes possibly unbalanced, focus 
on performance, nor does it make the many cases vanish where 
performance considerations are brought up as major or even 
priority factor for or against diverse considerations, ideas or 
concepts.

I am *not* against keeping an eye on performance, by no means. 
Looking at Moore's law, however, and at the kind of computing 
power available nowadays even in smartphones, not to talk about 8 
and 12 core PCs, I feel that the importance of performance is way 
overestimated (possibly following a formertimes justified 
tradition).

We need not look further than on our very desk. Basically all 
major OSes as well as all major software is riddled with bugs, 
problems, and considerable lack of security. - And - basically 
all major OSes and to a large degree software is written in - ? - 
languages of the C family. Coincidence?

Although it must be noted in fairness that D would indeed and 
very considerably enhance that sad situation. D has - and should 
be appreciated for that - made major steps towards reliability 
and a world with less software bugs. I can't prove that, I don't 
have statistics for that but I'm very confident of D allowing for 
more secure and reliable software being written.