Why is D unpopular?

[Paulo Pinto]

On Sunday, 1 May 2022 at 09:04:11 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 5/1/2022 12:33 AM, Paulo Pinto wrote:
>> First Lisp compiler was in 1960's....
>
> I know. And Lisp 1 was an interpreter, page 9 of:
>
> http://jmc.stanford.edu/articles/lisp/lisp.pdf
>
> I know perfectly well that interpreters have long evolved to 
> generate native code. I did one myself (Symantec's Java) in the 
> 1990s. I considered it for the Javascript interpreter I wrote 
> around 2000.
>
> I've also seen C interpreters in the 1980s. Why native C 
> compilers still didn't add interpretation to functions is a 
> mystery. The UCSD P-System had interpreting compilers for C, 
> Pascal, and Fortran in the 1980s.
>
> ***** Note that even the C interpreters would reject things 
> like: `int a[foo()];` i.e. CTFE was not part of the *language* 
> semantics. *****
>
> After D did it, suddenly the other native languages moved in 
> that direction. If you have another explanation for the timing, 
> I'd like to hear it.
>
> If you have a reference to a natively compiled language 
> specification that had compile-time constant-expressions that 
> could interpret a function at compile time, I'd appreciate it. 
> No, not an interpreted language that JITs whatever it can.
>
> Thanks!

I give up, as you clearly can't accept a compiled language from 
1960, about 30 years older than D, so why bother when it will be 
dismissed no matter what.