Why is D unpopular?

[kot]

On Wednesday, 3 November 2021 at 16:38:03 UTC, Ola Fosheim 
Grøstad wrote:
> On Wednesday, 3 November 2021 at 16:25:55 UTC, kot wrote:
>> now, if D had supported android/ios half as good as swift or 
>> kotlin, i would not think twice. i find these language wars 
>> silly, it is *always* about tooling/support. i am using c++ 
>> for my current project because i have to. if i could use D as 
>> painless as C++ (again, not about language quality. tool 
>> quality, os-support, seamless ecosystem) i wouldn't think 
>> twice. for the project i am working, experiements and live 
>> coding is vital. so, my obvious choice would be lisp right? 
>> but i can't.
>
> But do you feel productive in C++? I find that even for simple 
> things, in C++ it will take 10x longer than in Python and a 
> language like D is somewhere in-between. I guess that to some 
> extent this is because I usually don't do things in C++ unless 
> speed is critical, but the main gripe I have with C++ is that 
> changing code is very costly. So that does not encourage you to 
> avoid premature optimization. This is basically an area where a 
> language like D (perhaps also Rust) might do better. So when 
> you say that you do a project that requires experimentation, 
> what made you reject other languages than C++?

i am using c++ for almost 20 years and i am quite productive in 
it. given enough time i think one can be productive in any 
language. of course D would at least double that. this project 
(game) at first targetted both mobile and pc platforms. for this 
reason alone, i was stuck with c/c++. then i dropped mobile 
support. I don't know the state of tooling of D, but if it was 
seamless enough then D would be my first choice now. i don't like 
rust as much, rust code looks even uglier than c++ and its 
handling of generic-code/metaprogramming looks even worse. they 
should have started from D templates, not c++.

> what made you reject other languages than C++?

obvious choice for such a project is lisp, afaik no other 
language still has that speed/power when it comes to live coding. 
compared to C++ D has that too, answer is the same for both; tool 
and os support