Why is D unpopular?

[Walter Bright]

On 4/29/2022 3:40 AM, Chris wrote:
> I don't know to which extent this is true, but D is certainly more of a research 
> than a real world language. What galls ex-users is that this is not communicated 
> clearly to newcomers. Instead, you have to get deep into D (which, in fairness, 
> has its merits, because you learn a lot) before you realize that your projects 
> will forever be hampered by D's shortcomings. Same shortcomings are never really 
> addressed because D is, at its core, a CS research language (which is slowly 
> losing its edge over mainstream languages like C#, C++ etc.). The language 
> should not be sold as production ready. I remember the "update lottery" whenever 
> a new version was available: will it break my code or not? This is a situation 
> you find yourself in with languages that are below 1.0 and then you know what 
> you're in for. However, D is already 2.+. The only explanation is that in 
> reality D is still at a stage that is below 1.0. I've been an early adopter with 
> some PLs and one OS, it's always a bit of a gamble and it takes some effort. 
> However, those PLs and the OS have matured and stabilized. D never ever matures 
> or stabilizes, it just goes on and on and on being between 0.1 and 0.9. This 
> made it impossible for me to create real world applications. Apart from making 
> my work unnecessarily difficult, how could I justify the use of an eternal 0.x 
> language to superiors and users? break (D) { switch; }

We leave deprecated features alive for several years, and there are quite a lot 
of long term projects on buildkite that are part of the test suite so we know if 
something breaks.