Why is D unpopular?

[Bruce Carneal]

On Wednesday, 25 May 2022 at 18:56:03 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 5/24/2022 4:26 AM, Adam D Ruppe wrote:
>> It is a terrible switch that does random bad things.
>
> Back in the olden daze, I've seen magazine compiler benchmark 
> articles trash various compilers for poor runtime performance. 
> It nearly always boiled down to the journalist not using the 
> right switches for release builds.

At present this concern is not addressable by a single switch. 
Imagine the confusion if a performance reviewer did not choose 
ldc/gdc, did not avail his/herself of -Ox options, did not employ 
LTO, did not enable target arch specific optimization, ...

>
> So I'm leery of not being able to turn off the runtime checks 
> to get max performance.
>
> Besides, it provides a way of accurately measuring how much the 
> runtime checks are costing.

Yes, it enables that measurement but, as others have noted, it 
would be strange (if not outright foolish) to actually release 
code compiled with "-release".

I think there would be little concern if "-release" had been 
named "-removeAllSafetyChecks".