Why is D unpopular?

[Fry]

On Monday, 16 May 2022 at 08:33:08 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
> I don't think that's true at all. Maybe some people felt the 
> rate of change is to high (others will tell you they want more 
> breakage), but I suspect many D projects and libraries died off 
> because their creators moved on to other things before they got 
> their projects to the state they wanted. You can find countless 
> projects like that in every language ecosystem. They're perhaps 
> more noticeable in ours because we're so small.
>
> It's very easy to start a new project on a whim in any 
> language, but getting it to the state you're aiming for and 
> maintaining it long-term require discipline and commitment. 
> Talk to people who actually maintain projects long-term to see 
> what their take is.

I maintained a personal project that was 60k loc of D for the 
last 6-7 years. Probably won't pick D again for a long term 
project again. There was _always_ a new compiler bug whenever I 
upgraded to a new version of the compiler. I'd try to stick to 
one version of the compiler, but bug fixes only exist for newer 
versions. Also a quite a bit of breaking changes, I turned off 
warnings as errors at some point.

I also remember another instance of someone else here maintaining 
a D project that was still being used but not actively developed 
anymore. A fix was made in a newer version of D but they were 
originally using one several versions behind that their code just 
wasn't compatible with the new D compiler anymore. The response 
from Walter was to suggest making a donation to back port the fix.

What they did and what is probably being done by other 
individuals is to just stick to one version of D, a single 
release. Then hope you don't come across a bug you need fixed. 
Not sure who else you meant to ask, but yah long-term develop 
with D sucks compared to other languages.