[usrbinenv]

I really love D, it's one of my favorite languages. I've started implementing a vim-like text editor in it from scratch (using only Raylib as a dependency) and was surprised how far I was able to get and how good my test coverage was for it. My personal favorite features of D:

* unit tests anywhere, so I usually write my methods/functions with unit tests following them immediately

* blocks like version(unittest) {} makes it easy to exclude/include things that should only be compiled for testing

* enums, unions, asserts, contract programming are all great

I would say I didn't have to learn D much. Whatever I wanted to do with it, I would find in its docs or asked ChatGPT and there would always be a very nice way to do things.

[gavinray]

D is a bittersweet topic for me.

From a philosophical/language-design standpoint, it ticks so many boxes. It had the potential to be wildly popular, had a few things gone differently.

If the language tooling and library ecosystem were on par with the titans of today, like Rust/Go, it really would be a powerhouse language.

[binaryturtle]

Isn't D supported by the GNU compiler collection? I personally would prefer this type of tooling over what Rust and Go do (I can't even get their compilers to run on my old platform anymore; not to mention all this dependencies on remote resources typical Rust/Go projects seem to have: which seems to be enforced by the ecosystem?)

[BradleyChatha]

Yeah, the foundations of the language are incredible. It's just everything else around it that brings it down (and is unfortunately very hard to motivate people to solve).

D definitely missed a critical period, but I love it all the same.

[usrbinenv]

So, I also write Go and I don't get the part about tooling. I don't need formatters or linters as I'm adult enough to know how to format my code (in fact I dislike tools doing it for me). D also has dub, which is fine, as far as package managers go. The ecosystem is the only issue and Go does arguably have a lot of very cool libraries for virtually anything, but outside of webdev, I can't see myself using them. This is why D works a lot better for projects where I don't need all those dependencies and would do better without them.

[sfpotter]

I freely admit to not being a Go or Rust expert, but from what I can tell using C from D is even easier than in either of these languages. The C++ interop is also decently usable.

IMO, the bigger issue is language tooling.

[Clouudy]

If it makes you feel better I have some projects that I'm working on in order to improve the tooling. Would you mind listing out all of the things you think are missing, so I can work on those once I get the other ones done?

[foresto]

I like a lot about D. My main criticism of the language is that it quickly becomes too noisy as more of its nice features are used. I think this could be fixed, for example with better attribute defaults in function signatures, and I think Walter is aware of this.

I could tolerate the noisy language bits, but:

The standard library (Phobos) was so riddled with paper cuts that every day I used it felt like trying to navigate the surface of a coral reef... barefoot... in a hurricane... while blindfolded. It drove me off after a few months. (That was last year.)

A Phobos V3 design has begun, but given how few people they have to work on it, I am skeptical of it ever developing into a library that I would want to use. Here's hoping for a pleasant surprise. :)

[Clouudy]

You have any specific complaints about Phobos and a standard library you like?