Future of D 2.x as stable/bug fix, and what's next for D 3.x

[Eljay]

On Tuesday, 1 September 2020 at 15:23:10 UTC, IGotD- wrote:
> I didn't quite understand that sentence. What is the problem 
> with the current design that prevents D from gaining momentum?

D does have momentum.

Some obstacles as I see them are:
   * no corporate/government/academic sponsor backing the language
   * garbage collection

How one courts a sponsor, I do not know.

Garbage collection is a good thing for some programs, but a bad 
thing for other kinds of programs.  I think the C, C++, and Rust 
developers see "garbage collection", and don't take a second 
look.  If D was better at being @nogc friendly, out of the box, 
that would help -- but it would take a bit of an awareness 
campaign to spread the word.

The syntax has grown a bit, and somewhat awkwardly.  Maybe 
something to make the syntax less unwieldy.  (I don't think this 
causes acceptance impedance, though.  It's one of those things 
that gets discovered over time. C++ is also suffering from 
ceremonious syntax bloat because the unqualified defaults are 
wrong due to historical evolutionary reasons.)

To borrow what I've seen from another D developer...

private Handle foo_;
public @property inout(Handle) foo() nothrow pure @safe @nogc 
return inout {
    return foo_;
}