D needs to learn from competing languages and ecosystems.

[Sergey]

On Tuesday, 15 September 2026 at 10:57:26 UTC, Claudio Constantin 
wrote:
> Hello!

Hi there!

> I want to express my genuine interest in learning D as well as 
> the friction I'm facing in doing so, and at the same time, 
> relay my thoughts on what I believe would improve adoption.
>
> First, a bit about myself so you can understand where I am 
> coming from.
>
> I started programming during the Covid era because there was 
> nothing else for me to do.
> I'm 25, so nowhere near as experienced as many of you here. 
> Despite that, I want to write this to try and share my 
> perspective on things I have seen evolve.

Welcome!

> Lady Luck smiled and I got a job as an Android dev, so most of 
> my not-so-long career has revolved around Java, and now we're 
> migrating to Kotlin/Jetpack Compose.
>
> Since then I have explored more programming topics and 
> languages, because for me it's fun.
> It's fun to learn and do things.

In D community we are agree on that!

> It was inevitable to not hear about Rust a couple years ago, 
> but then I tried it and fell in love with it.
>
> Admiration towards Rust is often attributed to the language 
> design, which is fair. However, I don't think its popularity 
> exploded because of how good the language was, but because of 
> how complete the experience was.
>
> Cargo, rustfmt, rust-analyzer, clippy, MIRI, rustdoc... 
> everything provided in one package, under the Rust Project 
> umbrella (rust-analyzer wasn't originally part of it, it is 
> now).

All solutions have tradeoffs. Some users prefer to have control 
what to install.. rather than installing huge bundle altogether. 
But to have such option could be a nice addition.

LDC release is also providing:
- ldc (compiler)
- dub
- ddemangle
- dustmite
- ldc-build-{plugin/runtime}
- reggae
and other tools.
D also has dfmt and ddoc.

> This meant that with one VSCode extension and a shell command, 
> you could get a DX experience that would later set the standard 
> for expected language tooling.
>
> Rust wasn't the only language providing a batteries included 
> experience, Golang and Dart (the DSL for Flutter) also provided 
> a frictionless pipeline.
>
> One can argue that Dart never took off, but both Rust and Go 
> did, and while the *languages* themselves were good, I doubt 
> their adoption would have been as good weren't for their 
> complete toolchains.

Build such a toolchain installation project should not be that 
hard.

> But dotnet is working towards a better experience, their 
> official LSP is publicly available (but it is in prerelease), 
> and `dotnetup` is another official project, similar to rustup, 
> that acts as an entry point to the language.
>
> What I think D needs:
> - Toolchain manager, its own version of uv, rustup, dotnetup, 
> bun.

Compare to rustup, dotnetup we have a project 
https://code.dlang.org/packages/ldcup
which could be maybe extended at some point and provide options 
to install even more than just a compiler with package manager.

> - An official LSP, owned by the Dlang project, developed in 
> tandem with the compiler that should be easily managed.

We have serve-d (as currently the main LSP). There are also 
several alternative implementations - recently some LSP 
functionality was added to DCD.

> - A tree-sitter parser, or at least adopt a community one, it 
> is expected to have one nowadays.

D has 2 implementations of tree-sitter. One of which is used in D 
extension for Zed.

> - Extensions for popular code editors and IDE.

We have them a lot. Even specific one for Visual Studio (not VS 
Code, but the original).
And there is a WIP project to improve Visual Studio support.
There is even D extension for Nova editor.

https://wiki.dlang.org/IDEs
https://github.com/dlang-community/awesome-d#ides--editors

> - An official book you can read online, both Rust and Go 
> provide their own.

We have Ali's book, which is hosted on official website:
https://dlang.org/book/

> The items on this list aren't easy to develop and maintain, and 
> there's a real cost, human and economic, behind each of them.
> Do I think D could become the most popular programming language 
> in the world if these things were done? No, I'm not that naive, 
> but I'm 120% sure that interest would skyrocket.

Most of the mentioned things are existing.

> I'm not familiar with the sentiment in this community around 
> adoption, or if it is even viewed as an issue, but my 
> experience is this.
>
> People expect something better, when you don't provide it, they 
> don't tell you and carry on.
>
> I'm eager to see what you guys think of my observations and 
> proposals. Even if it all is wishful thinking without much 
> acknowledgment of the real cost, I wholeheartedly believe it is 
> what'll guarantee a better future for the project.

We have most of the things. They are maybe less polish as D 
doesn't have huge financial funding as languages from Apple, 
Oracle, Microslop, Google and FAANG (Rust,JS,C++).
And community is mostly working on them in their spare time and 
sometimes the work could be funded by corporates who are using D.

Thanks for sharing your feedback!
If you like the language's vibe - you are welcome to use it and 
maybe even improve currently available projects =)