What do you think would be the key factors to drive mass adoption of D?

[Dukc]

On Thursday, 22 January 2026 at 00:57:04 UTC, MacAsm wrote:
> What else do you see as important missing pieces? Better mobile 
> / web / embedded? GC improvements or u/nogc-by-default push? 
> Something completely different?
>
> Curious to hear your thoughts.

My guess is it's more of a marketing/networking than a technical 
issue.

As I understand it, all non-mainstream languages are a bit 
unpolished, have relatively few tutorials, relatively little 
support in IDE tooling and so on compared to the biggest 
mainstream languages. It isn't D-specific.

The only way to compete in those areas is to become big first by 
other means. The people and organisations that demand top-class 
tutorials and tooling simply aren't a relevant target audience 
for a small-ish language. The language should instead appeal to 
those who have some willingness to experiment with new technology 
and some patience to deal with teething issues.

I'm a fan of another relatively new technology that is yet to 
become mainstream: the [Nix package manager](https://nixos.org). 
At least my experience is that Nix has far more issues typical of 
new technology than D, yet it is about as popular as it can be 
without being quite mainstream (and it's good points are really, 
*really* good). Yes, it has a LOT of packages, but once you need 
to use something that's not already packaged for it it's going to 
get rather involved. Meaning, it still has "bad ecosystem" 
problems in its own way, on top of relatively bad documentation 
and other teething issues, especially around flakes. I bring this 
up because IMO it shows that D has smoothened its teething issues 
more than enough for the kind of user who really want a cutting 
edge language. If people can deal with an operating system built 
around Nix, D is a walk in the park.

Then again, I'm far from knowledgeable on how the marketplace of 
ideas works and my intuition in these cases is bad. I'm not very 
confident in this assessment even myself and neither should you 
be, unless your own experience supports it.