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digitalmars.D - Article calls D "irrelevant"

reply Meta <jared771 gmail.com> writes:
https://www.makeuseof.com/why-is-c-programming-language-called-c-what-happened-to-d/

"But, despite its achievement, D faced a classic problem. By the 
time D arrived, the world had already moved on. Enterprise 

locked into C and C++. A few years later, a language called Rust 
appeared which focused heavily on memory safety (the same 
principle as D), and it managed to capture the attention of the 
tech world in a way that D never quite managed — and effectively 
made D irrelevant.

Today, D exists as a highly respected niche language. It's 
actually used by companies like Netflix and eBay for specific 
high-performance tasks. It's a great language, but it never 
became a king."
Feb 24
next sibling parent reply Kapendev <alexandroskapretsos gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 25 February 2026 at 02:27:35 UTC, Meta wrote:

 https://www.makeuseof.com/why-is-c-programming-language-called-c-what-happened-to-d/

 "But, despite its achievement, D faced a classic problem. By 
 the time D arrived, the world had already moved on. Enterprise 

 firmly locked into C and C++. A few years later, a language 
 called Rust appeared which focused heavily on memory safety 
 (the same principle as D), and it managed to capture the 
 attention of the tech world in a way that D never quite managed 
 — and effectively made D irrelevant.

 Today, D exists as a highly respected niche language. It's 
 actually used by companies like Netflix and eBay for specific 
 high-performance tasks. It's a great language, but it never 
 became a king."


This thread will be one of those ones, huh?
Well, here we go again.

It seems to be more of an article about C than D.
I don't think the author has strong opinions about D or anything.
Just a comment from a person looking at the history of C.
Feb 24
next sibling parent matheus <matheus gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 25 February 2026 at 02:49:15 UTC, Kapendev wrote:

 ...
 It seems to be more of an article about C than D.
 I don't think the author has strong opinions about D or 
 anything.
 Just a comment from a person looking at the history of C.


Yes, in fact it was more about C and why some languages were 
named as they were, and why C++ was named like this instead of D 
breaking the "alphabetic order", and then he wrote this snippet 
about D.

Let's see how D++ will perform in the future, since it will be 
the first language with AI integrated, it would make a dent in 
the language market share for sure.

Matheus.
Feb 24
prev sibling parent reply Meta <jared771 gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 25 February 2026 at 02:49:15 UTC, Kapendev wrote:

 On Wednesday, 25 February 2026 at 02:27:35 UTC, Meta wrote:

 https://www.makeuseof.com/why-is-c-programming-language-called-c-what-happened-to-d/

 "But, despite its achievement, D faced a classic problem. By 
 the time D arrived, the world had already moved on. Enterprise 

 firmly locked into C and C++. A few years later, a language 
 called Rust appeared which focused heavily on memory safety 
 (the same principle as D), and it managed to capture the 
 attention of the tech world in a way that D never quite 
 managed — and effectively made D irrelevant.

 Today, D exists as a highly respected niche language. It's 
 actually used by companies like Netflix and eBay for specific 
 high-performance tasks. It's a great language, but it never 
 became a king."


 This thread will be one of those ones, huh?
 Well, here we go again.

 It seems to be more of an article about C than D.
 I don't think the author has strong opinions about D or 
 anything.
 Just a comment from a person looking at the history of C.


Ya, the point is this public perception of D as a language whose 
time has passed. How do we change this?
Feb 24
next sibling parent Serg Gini <kornburn yandex.ru> writes:
On Wednesday, 25 February 2026 at 05:29:39 UTC, Meta wrote:

 Ya, the point is this public perception of D as a language 
 whose time has passed. How do we change this?


my 5cents:

1) I think it is AI generated
2) Most of the points in the paragraph is true though
3) I don't think we could change this
Feb 25
prev sibling parent Kapendev <alexandroskapretsos gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 25 February 2026 at 05:29:39 UTC, Meta wrote:

 Ya, the point is this public perception of D as a language 
 whose time has passed. How do we change this?


You will see different kinds of opinions about D depending on 
what community you are in. Casual users might not find it 
interesting, and people who code recreationally might think it's 
the best thing ever.
Things like that change over time and the only thing you and I 
can do it write more code.

But also, asking me about this is a bad idea because I don't 
think it matters lol.
If someone doesn't see value in D, then that is fine.
Why should I care?
You can't expect people to spend time on all the 69+ languages we 
have today, most of them being just a collection of remixed ideas 
and a waste of time (*hot take*).
Feb 25
prev sibling next sibling parent monkyyy <crazymonkyyy gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 25 February 2026 at 02:27:35 UTC, Meta wrote:

 https://www.makeuseof.com/why-is-c-programming-language-called-c-what-happened-to-d/


I suspect ai slop
Feb 24
prev sibling next sibling parent Paulo Pinto <pjmlp progtools.org> writes:
On Wednesday, 25 February 2026 at 02:27:35 UTC, Meta wrote:

 https://www.makeuseof.com/why-is-c-programming-language-called-c-what-happened-to-d/

 "But, despite its achievement, D faced a classic problem. By 
 the time D arrived, the world had already moved on. Enterprise 

 firmly locked into C and C++. A few years later, a language 
 called Rust appeared which focused heavily on memory safety 
 (the same principle as D), and it managed to capture the 
 attention of the tech world in a way that D never quite managed 
 — and effectively made D irrelevant.

 Today, D exists as a highly respected niche language. It's 
 actually used by companies like Netflix and eBay for specific 
 high-performance tasks. It's a great language, but it never 
 became a king."


As someone that still has a special place for D, and promotes it 
when opportunity comes up.

In 2026, the world of programming languages isn't the same as 
when Andrei Alexandrescu published his on D, back in 2010.

Many of the features that D had, are now available in various 

clunky or half way there versus what D has, they have the IDEs, 
libraries and frameworks to make up for it, and company overlords 
to push them no matter what.


Remedy made use of it.

Then we have Rust, Go, Zig, Odin, C3, and whatever else is new on 
HN, as new contenders, some of them with huge enterprise support, 
including Facebook, once upon a time a D adopter.

Finally there is the whole AI programming, that to some extent 
makes the actual programming language irrelevant, where classical 
programming languages become a target for code generation out of 
human language or formal proofs.

I wish D stays around, it has quite a few cool ideas, and I am on 
the sytems languages with automatic resource management team.

However, it is what it is after all these years.
Feb 25
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Mike Parker <aldacron gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 25 February 2026 at 02:27:35 UTC, Meta wrote:


 Today, D exists as a highly respected niche language. It's 
 actually used by companies like Netflix and eBay for specific 
 high-performance tasks. It's a great language, but it never 
 became a king."


I will never understand this thinking that a language has to be 
in the top N languages or else it's 
dead/irrelevant/pointless/etc. There are numerous languages out 
there chugging along in their niches just fine, and D is one of 
them.

That said, in the absences of funding to hire a pro marketing 
team, the answer to this now is the same as it has always been: 
if you're using D and would like to see more people using it, 
tell the world about it. Write blog posts and post videos on 
YouTube. Give talks at tech conferences. Talk about your 
projects, the problems you've solved and how, the things you can 
do with D that are frustrating in other languages, and so on.

Word of mouth is sill the best form of marketing. I see stuff all 
over the place about other languages. Meanwhile, many of the 
people who could be sharing the same kinds of things about D are 
writing thousands of words about it, but they're doing it in the 
community Discord server.

We're in the process of getting the blog revived. Once it's up 
and running again, that's one place where you can write about 
your D projects if you don't have your own blog, but it would be 
really great to see it happening in other spaces, too.
Feb 25
next sibling parent reply Serg Gini <kornburn yandex.ru> writes:
On Wednesday, 25 February 2026 at 08:53:33 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:

 dead/irrelevant/pointless/etc. There are numerous languages out 
 there chugging along in their niches just fine, and D is one of 
 them.


I wonder which one do you refer here?
Feb 25
parent reply Dukc <ajieskola gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 25 February 2026 at 09:05:33 UTC, Serg Gini wrote:

 On Wednesday, 25 February 2026 at 08:53:33 UTC, Mike Parker 
 wrote:

 dead/irrelevant/pointless/etc. There are numerous languages 
 out there chugging along in their niches just fine, and D is 
 one of them.


 I wonder which one do you refer here?


I don't think he's intending any language in particular. There 
are many, many of them. Examples from top of my head:

- Ada
- Agda
- Crystal

- Forth
- Fortran
- Nim
- OCaml
- Prolog
- Scala
Feb 25
parent reply Serg Gini <kornburn yandex.ru> writes:
On Wednesday, 25 February 2026 at 10:45:37 UTC, Dukc wrote:

 I don't think he's intending any language in particular. There 
 are many, many of them. Examples from top of my head:


I think we should define "niche lang" better. As being 
non-popular doesn't make the language automatically "niche". 
Being "elegant" shouldn't be a niche. Also inheriting some 
syntax. It should be something unique and applicable probably.
And in case niche language - it should be pretty simple to "name" 
the niche.
So let's see


 - Ada


Niche - strong safety guarantees.


 - Agda
 - Prolog
 - Forth


Not sure about these one, but I think they have some pretty 
unique approaches


 - Fortran


Niche - HPC, heavy computations in math and modeling


 - OCaml

 - Scala


Niche - strong FP in native, .NET and JVM worlds


 - Crystal
 - Nim


Not sure these 2 have specific niches.. First is "Ruby-like fast" 
and second "Python-like fast". But I think they are closer to D 
of "niche-less" ones
Feb 25
parent reply Kapendev <alexandroskapretsos gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 25 February 2026 at 12:19:04 UTC, Serg Gini wrote:

 I think we should define "niche lang" better. As being 
 non-popular doesn't make the language automatically "niche". 
 Being "elegant" shouldn't be a niche. Also inheriting some 
 syntax. It should be something unique and applicable probably.
 And in case niche language - it should be pretty simple to 
 "name" the niche.
 So let's see
 ...
 - Crystal
 - Nim
 Not sure these 2 have specific niches.. First is "Ruby-like 
 fast" and second "Python-like fast". But I think they are 
 closer to D of "niche-less" ones


Nim and Crystal are more than just Python and Ruby clones.
One thing they are good at is metaprogramming. Kinda the same as 
D and Zig.

As someone said in the past:

 "Not sure about these one, but I think they have some pretty 
 unique approaches" - D Forum User
Feb 25
parent reply Serg Gini <kornburn yandex.ru> writes:
On Wednesday, 25 February 2026 at 14:36:49 UTC, Kapendev wrote:

 Nim and Crystal are more than just Python and Ruby clones.
 One thing they are good at is metaprogramming. Kinda the same 
 as D and Zig.


Ok but metaprogramming is not that unique then.. Like so many 
langs have it nowadays.
So it is very competitive niche)
Feb 25
parent Kapendev <alexandroskapretsos gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 25 February 2026 at 15:01:55 UTC, Serg Gini wrote:

 On Wednesday, 25 February 2026 at 14:36:49 UTC, Kapendev wrote:

 Nim and Crystal are more than just Python and Ruby clones.
 One thing they are good at is metaprogramming. Kinda the same 
 as D and Zig.


 Ok but metaprogramming is not that unique then.. Like so many 
 langs have it nowadays.
 So it is very competitive niche)


Give me a list of languages that do it.
Feb 25
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Meta <jared771 gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 25 February 2026 at 08:53:33 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:

 On Wednesday, 25 February 2026 at 02:27:35 UTC, Meta wrote:

 Word of mouth is sill the best form of marketing. I see stuff 
 all over the place about other languages. Meanwhile, many of 
 the people who could be sharing the same kinds of things about 
 D are writing thousands of words about it, but they're doing it 
 in the community Discord server.


Yeah, I advocated for it for 10 years at my old job, but 
unfortunately nobody ever took much of an interest. I wrote a 
bunch of tools that, now that I'm gone, will never be used again. 
Granted Java was by far the most heavily used language there, so 
go figure.
Feb 25
parent reply Mike Parker <aldacron gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 25 February 2026 at 10:23:42 UTC, Meta wrote:

 On Wednesday, 25 February 2026 at 08:53:33 UTC, Mike Parker 
 wrote:

 On Wednesday, 25 February 2026 at 02:27:35 UTC, Meta wrote:

 Word of mouth is sill the best form of marketing. I see stuff 
 all over the place about other languages. Meanwhile, many of 
 the people who could be sharing the same kinds of things about 
 D are writing thousands of words about it, but they're doing 
 it in the community Discord server.


 Yeah, I advocated for it for 10 years at my old job, but 
 unfortunately nobody ever took much of an interest. I wrote a 
 bunch of tools that, now that I'm gone, will never be used 
 again. Granted Java was by far the most heavily used language 
 there, so go figure.


Right. Some people have gotten lucky getting it into their 
workplaces to one degree or another, but that's notoriously 
difficult. Worth trying, but don't expect much.

Broadcasting to the world is a different story, as that's how you 
reach people who are receptive. We are never, ever going to 
convince someone who isn't looking to be convinced. People who 
are already entrenched in a particular language are unlikely to 
make the switch, and very likely to pick a dozen nits when they 
try any other language, all of which they will cite as blockers. 
How many times have I seen that movie?

But there are plenty of people out there who are either open to 
or actively looking for something new. All it takes is one blog 
post or one video to pique their curiosity. Most of them will 
check it out and leave, but some percentage will stay.

Over the years I've seen people writing about how they found D. 
Several have said they found it through Andrei's 'The Case for D' 
article. I recall a couple people mentioning an old article in a 
German magazine, or a discussion on Reddit, etc.

I found it in a forum post on the old flipcode.com in the summer 
of 2003 from a guy who was evangelizing it because he hated C++. 
I did, too. And I was tired of Java, tired of C, and actively 
looking for something that could give me what I liked about them 
without what I disliked about them. The old digitalmars.com site 
(this was before dlang.org) turned me off initially, but I 
decided to come back and give it a go a couple months later and 
here I am.

That's why it's important for people actively using D to talk 
about and show off what they're working on, to show we're active 
and to reach the people who can be reached. One of those people 
you reach might start a business down the road and then we have 
another D shop.
Feb 25
parent "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh qfbox.info> writes:
On Wed, Feb 25, 2026 at 12:07:45PM +0000, Mike Parker via Digitalmars-d wrote:
[...]

 Over the years I've seen people writing about how they found D.
 Several have said they found it through Andrei's 'The Case for D'
 article. I recall a couple people mentioning an old article in a
 German magazine, or a discussion on Reddit, etc.
 
 I found it in a forum post on the old flipcode.com in the summer of
 2003 from a guy who was evangelizing it because he hated C++. I did,
 too. And I was tired of Java, tired of C, and actively looking for
 something that could give me what I liked about them without what I
 disliked about them. The old digitalmars.com site (this was before
 dlang.org) turned me off initially, but I decided to come back and
 give it a go a couple months later and here I am.


I found D because at the time I had been working with C++ for years, and
was hating every bit of it, and was actively looking for alternatives.
At first when I found D, I thought it looked interesting but the mention
of GC turned me off (I was a fool back then).  One day, however, I
stumbled across Andrei's book in a local bookstore, bought it on a whim,
and started actually trying out D.  It was gradual, but once I got over
my C/C++-inflicted GC phobia (Andrei's article on GC helped), I started
loving every bit of it.  Everything just made so much more sense than
the labyrinth of dangerous explosives that is C++.


T

-- 
Artillery puns go off really well, you should sea mine.
Feb 25
prev sibling parent reply "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh qfbox.info> writes:
On Wed, Feb 25, 2026 at 08:53:33AM +0000, Mike Parker via Digitalmars-d wrote:
[...]

 I will never understand this thinking that a language has to be in the
 top N languages or else it's dead/irrelevant/pointless/etc.


+100, me too!  I will never understand why some people are so insecure
that their evaluation of things depends on others' acceptance of them.
There are plenty of "popular" languages out there that, technically
speaking, suck.  But hey, who am I to judge, right?

In the meantime, D has been one of the best things that's ever happened
to me.


T

-- 
It said to install Windows 2000 or better, so I installed Linux instead.
Feb 25
parent reply Serg Gini <kornburn yandex.ru> writes:
On Wednesday, 25 February 2026 at 15:33:44 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:

 On Wed, Feb 25, 2026 at 08:53:33AM +0000, Mike Parker via 
 Digitalmars-d wrote: [...]

 I will never understand this thinking that a language has to 
 be in the top N languages or else it's 
 dead/irrelevant/pointless/etc.


 +100, me too!  I will never understand why some people are so 
 insecure that their evaluation of things depends on others' 
 acceptance of them.


Really? I always thought that this is super obvious.
This is the same as with "natural languages" - if nobody speaks 
the language, the language is dying. If the language has small 
people who speak the language - it is hard to evolve.
For example, now for ARM we had LDC/GDC, but for DMD we had 
issues..
Let's say next year RISC-V will become super popular.. it will be 
another issue.
What if the next type of XPU(not CPU or even TPU) will be soo 
different, that it will be supported only by new thing? no GCC 
and no LLVM. For example, only MLIR.
Same is applicable for library support.

You will need significant resources to build such support. Of 
course our GDC and LDC maintainers are real hackers who probably 
will be able to do that, but it will be hard.
And when you have a lot of "speakers" it is easier to evolve and 
adopt to a constantly changing world.

Getting back to natural languages this is the issue of small 
nations. People are learning:
1) English/Spanish - because they are the biggest populations
2) Chinese - good potential for future
3) Large groups like Italian, French, German, Korean, Japanese, 
etc
4) You are probably the linguist of specific region so you are 
study the language for research

But do you know many people who are learning the languages of 
Vanuatu or Micronesia?
Feb 25
parent reply "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh qfbox.info> writes:
On Wed, Feb 25, 2026 at 04:13:02PM +0000, Serg Gini via Digitalmars-d wrote:

 On Wednesday, 25 February 2026 at 15:33:44 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:

 On Wed, Feb 25, 2026 at 08:53:33AM +0000, Mike Parker via Digitalmars-d
 wrote: [...]

 I will never understand this thinking that a language has to be in
 the top N languages or else it's dead/irrelevant/pointless/etc.


 
 +100, me too!  I will never understand why some people are so
 insecure that their evaluation of things depends on others'
 acceptance of them.


 
 Really? I always thought that this is super obvious.
 This is the same as with "natural languages" - if nobody speaks the
 language, the language is dying. If the language has small people who
 speak the language - it is hard to evolve.


Latin has been a "dead" language as long as I can remember, but believe
it or not, people still understand it.

D is still thriving in its own community, and is nowhere close to the
state of Latin.



 For example, now for ARM we had LDC/GDC, but for DMD we had issues..


I almost never use DMD except during development of individual modules
because of the fast turnaround times.  For just about everything else I
use LDC.  Besides compile speeds, LDC/GDC codegen is far superior to
DMD, to the point these days I don't even bother looking at DMD output.
For anything performance-related I don't even think about using DMD.



 Let's say next year RISC-V will become super popular.. it will be
 another issue.


So what?  I don't care to chase the next popular trend.  I'm
pathologically skeptical of new bandwagons.  Like Walter once said,

	I've been around long enough to have seen an endless parade of
	magic new techniques du jour, most of which purport to remove
	the necessity of thought about your programming problem.  In the
	end they wind up contributing one or two pieces to the
	collective wisdom, and fade away in the rearview mirror.
	-- Walter Bright



 What if the next type of XPU(not CPU or even TPU) will be soo
 different, that it will be supported only by new thing? no GCC and no
 LLVM. For example, only MLIR.


So what?  There's enough people invested into LLVM that it's only a
matter of time before there will be support.

If you feel the urgency to be on top of the latest trend, then maybe
what you want is really one of the more popular languages. :-P

Me -- I'm looking for something long-term that will last for a long time
in spite of the popular trends of the day.  I couldn't care less about
the latest hype and "hot" trends.  They all eventually cool down and
fade away anyway.



 Same is applicable for library support.


What libraries do you have in mind?  My D projects have had no problem
interfacing with C libraries.  D's C-compatibility is commendable.



 You will need significant resources to build such support. Of course
 our GDC and LDC maintainers are real hackers who probably will be able
 to do that, but it will be hard.


What kind of support are we talking about here?  As I said, I've not had
major obstacles interfacing with C libraries.  C++ template libraries
are a different beast, but (1) I couldn't care less about going back to
the ugly mess that is C++ templates, and (2) C is still the standard
cross-language library API, like it or not, and D works just fine with
that.  You aren't gonna see, for example, Rust or Java support for
interfacing with C++ template libraries, but native C library support is
a thing with almost every "popular" language out there.  Meaning that
D's C library support is adequate.  ImportC is supposed to make that
even easier, but so far I haven't had to try that yet -- my C libraries
work just fine with ad hoc extern(C) declarations on an as-needed basis.



 And when you have a lot of "speakers" it is easier to evolve and adopt
 to a constantly changing world.


You're talking to the wrong person then. :-D  I don't care about chasing
the latest trends, and am completely indifferent to what's hot or what's
"up and coming".



 Getting back to natural languages this is the issue of small nations.
 People are learning:
 1) English/Spanish - because they are the biggest populations
 2) Chinese - good potential for future
 3) Large groups like Italian, French, German, Korean, Japanese, etc
 4) You are probably the linguist of specific region so you are study
 the language for research


Why should I care who's learning what language?  I learn whatever
language interests me, who cares if nobody else is interested in it.
Learning a rare language can be a gift -- you become the only one in
your circle to know that language, and that can be a powerful leverage.



 But do you know many people who are learning the languages of Vanuatu
 or Micronesia?


For one thing, I would, if I had the time/energy.  Learning languages
opens new borders and enlarges your worldview.  I highly recommend it --
I speak 5 languages and am hoping to pick up a 6th sometime in this
lifetime -- hopefully in a new language family completely alien to me.
It's a very broadening experience.


T

-- 
Что любишь - тем станешь.
Feb 25
parent Serg Gini <kornburn yandex.ru> writes:
On Wednesday, 25 February 2026 at 16:46:12 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:

 Latin has been a "dead" language as long as I can remember, but 
 believe it or not, people still understand it.

 D is still thriving in its own community, and is nowhere close 
 to the state of Latin.


I'm specifically decided to not use Latin in example, because 
Latin is the base for many languages. It is more like Assembly or 
C.
D has nothing to do with Latin.


 I almost never use DMD except during development of individual 
 modules because of the fast turnaround times.  For just about 
 everything else I use LDC.  Besides compile speeds, LDC/GDC 
 codegen is far superior to DMD, to the point these days I don't 
 even bother looking at DMD output. For anything 
 performance-related I don't even think about using DMD.


Same. Here we aligned :)


 So what?  I don't care to chase the next popular trend.  I'm 
 pathologically skeptical of new bandwagons.  Like Walter once 
 said,

 	I've been around long enough to have seen an endless parade of
 	magic new techniques du jour, most of which purport to remove
 	the necessity of thought about your programming problem.  In 
 the
 	end they wind up contributing one or two pieces to the
 	collective wisdom, and fade away in the rearview mirror.
 	-- Walter Bright


It's good when you can use outdated technologies and be not 
competitive on the market..
But hey - somebody didn't care about ARM .. until it was 
impossible to ignore :)


 So what?  There's enough people invested into LLVM that it's 
 only a matter of time before there will be support.


Nokia also probably thought they will do mobiles forever :)


 If you feel the urgency to be on top of the latest trend, then 
 maybe what you want is really one of the more popular 
 languages. :-P
 Me -- I'm looking for something long-term that will last for a 
 long time in spite of the popular trends of the day.  I 
 couldn't care less about the latest hype and "hot" trends.  
 They all eventually cool down and fade away anyway.


It is much more about long term support and back compatibility 
than "top of old trends".
Having new architecture supported while old one is continue 
working.


 What libraries do you have in mind?  My D projects have had no 
 problem interfacing with C libraries.  D's C-compatibility is 
 commendable.


Many, and I even have issues with C libs (when you want to make 
it "just works" with dub for example).
But not all libraries are in C, some of them are C++ and Rust.
Worth to be mentioned: transformers, flatbuffers, safetensors, 
sentencesimple, protobuf, etc.


 You're talking to the wrong person then. :-D  I don't care 
 about chasing the latest trends, and am completely indifferent 
 to what's hot or what's "up and coming".


It's good to have an ability to be indifferent for such things.
Just chilling and do hobby-programming :) D is perfect for that - 
I agree.


 Why should I care who's learning what language?  I learn 
 whatever language interests me, who cares if nobody else is 
 interested in it. Learning a rare language can be a gift -- you 
 become the only one in your circle to know that language, and 
 that can be a powerful leverage.


Languages tend to be used to speak in them.. if there is nobody 
to speak with?..


 For one thing, I would, if I had the time/energy.  Learning 
 languages opens new borders and enlarges your worldview.  I 
 highly recommend it -- I speak 5 languages and am hoping to 
 pick up a 6th sometime in this lifetime -- hopefully in a new 
 language family completely alien to me. It's a very broadening 
 experience.


Same true for programming languages. But in reality we have 
constraints in resources and time..
Feb 25
prev sibling next sibling parent Dejan Lekic <dejan.lekic gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 25 February 2026 at 02:27:35 UTC, Meta wrote:


 attention of the tech world in a way that D never quite managed 
 — and effectively made D irrelevant.



Every "relevant" language was "irrelevant" first, until it became 
"relevant" (and back)...
Feb 25
prev sibling next sibling parent Dukc <ajieskola gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 25 February 2026 at 02:27:35 UTC, Meta wrote:

 https://www.makeuseof.com/why-is-c-programming-language-called-c-what-happened-to-d/

 A few years later, a language called Rust appeared which 
 focused heavily on memory safety (the same principle as D), and 
 it managed to capture the attention of the tech world in a way 
 that D never quite managed — and effectively made D irrelevant.


I echo what others have said. Probably this is a shallow take by 
someone who doesn't understand the difference between D and Rust 
well.

And also, that it's about marketing, not about technical 
shortcomings. D is technically rough around the edges compared to 
mainstream languages, but I don't those issues are worse than 
what the mainstream languages had when they were still niche. 
Likely the other way around in many cases!

There are still no mainstream languages that fulfill the raison 
d'atre of D: being equally suitable for application and systems 
programming. Some other niche languages do that - Nim at least - 
but none of those are clearly more popular or more polished than 
D as far as I know.
Feb 25
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
d rox
Feb 25
parent "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh qfbox.info> writes:
On Wed, Feb 25, 2026 at 03:15:42PM +0000, Adam D. Ruppe via Digitalmars-d wrote:

 d rox


d boulders!


--T
Feb 25
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Indraj Gandham <newsgroups indraj.net> writes:
About the article:


 He called this new language B. It was fast, it was lean, and it was the first
step towards modern programming.


B was not fast, it was an interpreted language due to severe memory 
constraints which were only alleviated with the jump from the PDP-7 to 
PDP-11. The intended purpose of B was to implement UNIX itself, but this 
failed to materialise due to the slow performance.

It's probably also a stretch to call B "modern", because it was not a 
high-level language in the way we tend to think about the term today. 
The design decisions underpinning B are skewed heavily in favour of the 
compiler-writer rather than programmer convenience.[1] As far as I am 
aware, Thompson's experiences with PL/I were a significant factor in 
these decisions.


 His innovation was the introduction of a Type System. He created the char type
for characters and int type for integers. Now the programmer could tell the
computer that this box is for a single letter, so don't waste extra space on it.


This explanation ignores the fact that the PDP-11 introduced a 
floating-point arithmetic unit, which a typeless language would struggle 
to make use of.


 But, despite its achievement, D faced a classic problem. By the time D
arrived, the world had already moved on. Enterprise companies were using Java

later, a language called Rust appeared which focused heavily on memory safety
(the same principle as D), and it managed to capture the attention of the tech
world in a way that D never quite managed — and effectively made D irrelevant.


Rust is not a replacement for D. It is not even a replacement for C++. 
It is a language that encourages poor engineering practices through 
authoritarian compiler features.[2] The only reason it has succeeded at 
all is due to intense lobbying. If you want to encourage D adoption at 
the enterprise level, you have to pitch it to decision-makers, not HN.

In response to this thread:

--> Paulo Pinto:


 Many of the features that D had, are now available in various flavours in

versus what D has, they have the IDEs, libraries and frameworks to make up for
it, and company overlords to push them no matter what.


As far as I can tell, IDEs have not solved all the problems that have 
arisen as a result of lacklustre execution of language features. C++ is 
a prime example, and fixing those errors is at least part of D's raison 
d'être.

In terms of libraries, D has access to the entire C ecosystem, which 
eclipses that of virtually every other language.


 Finally there is the whole AI programming, that to some extent makes the
actual programming language irrelevant, where classical programming languages
become a target for code generation out of human language or formal proofs.


See: https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/illusion-of-thinking
Credit to Adam Wilson for showing me this.


 However, it is what it is after all these years.


It is a mature, stable language that is officially shipped on major 
Linux distributions and ready for production use today. That is more 
than can be said for some of those other "hyped" languages.

--> Mike Parker:


 That said, in the absences of funding to hire a pro marketing team, the answer
to this now is the same as it has always been: if you're using D and would like
to see more people using it, tell the world about it. Write blog posts and post
videos on YouTube. Give talks at tech conferences. Talk about your projects,
the problems you've solved and how, the things you can do with D that are
frustrating in other languages, and so on.


Yes, I think this is the way forward. Last year I gave a talk at a local 
cybersecurity event about how D's design can improve memory safety 
outcomes for systems programming without sacrificing developer 
ergonomics. I hope that some in the audience went on to try out D for 
their own projects.


 Right. Some people have gotten lucky getting it into their workplaces to one
degree or another, but that's notoriously difficult. Worth trying, but don't
expect much. 



 But there are plenty of people out there who are either open to or actively
looking for something new. All it takes is one blog post or one video to pique
their curiosity. Most of them will check it out and leave, but some percentage
will stay.


I discovered D at the same time that I was thinking about rewriting some 
program we were using at work. I'd written the original version in Go, 
but I didn't like that language very much, so I was open to trying 
something else.

--> Dejan Lekic:


 Every "relevant" language was "irrelevant" first, until it became "relevant"
(and back)...


Indeed!

--> Kapendev:


 If someone doesn't see value in D, then that is fine.
 Why should I care? 


For solo projects it doesn't matter, but there are times when you may 
need to convince your teammates or your boss. Some people also just like 
sharing knowledge and advocating for positions they feel strongly about.

--> Serg Gini:


 I think we should define "niche lang" better. As being non-popular doesn't
make the language automatically "niche". Being "elegant" shouldn't be a niche.


Absolutely!

--> H. S. Teoh:


 I will never understand why some people are so insecure
 that their evaluation of things depends on others' acceptance of them.


I suspect it is down to lazy groupthink more than anything else. In any 
case, it is incredibly sad.


 In the meantime, D has been one of the best things that's ever happened
 to me.


Same here. I have specific ideas about how I want to program, and D 
allows me to express them in a natural way. Although I originally sought 
to replace Go, it has replaced C in all my new projects too.


 It said to install Windows 2000 or better, so I installed Linux instead.


:-D

Indraj

Footnotes:

[1] Examples include array references decomposing into pointers, or the 
omission of nested procedures (which would have required activation 
records to contain a static link). FWIW, PL/I had composite arrays with 
bounds checking, as well the ability to add custom upper and lower 
bounds, as opposed to BCPL's offset model.

[2] Naturally, I am referring to RAII and borrow checking. Those in the 
know have been using arenas to simplify memory management since forever, 
and scope() takes care of the rest. A good malloc implementation might 
use arenas internally for the purpose of avoiding the heap fragmentation 
that comes with RAII, but it cannot know the inherent relationships 
between different objects in terms of lifetimes. That is the job of the 
programmer. The existence of the borrow checker perpetuates the use of 
RAII, allowing Rust programmers to ignore obvious insights.
Feb 25
parent Serg Gini <kornburn yandex.ru> writes:
On Wednesday, 25 February 2026 at 17:09:39 UTC, Indraj Gandham 
wrote:

 See: 
 https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/illusion-of-thinking
 Credit to Adam Wilson for showing me this.


Short note: cite this paper carefully - the experiment was badly 
designed.
It was destroyed by AI community after it was published.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.01231 - one of the example of 
counter-paper
Feb 25
prev sibling next sibling parent monkyyy <crazymonkyyy gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 25 February 2026 at 02:27:35 UTC, Meta wrote:

 https://www.makeuseof.com/why-is-c-programming-language-called-c-what-happened-to-d/


Again, Im quite sure this is ai slop; its bringing up ancient 
history and shamshing it together with (stupid and wrong) rust 
talking points.

This is will be an extra unproductive hell thread and should just 
be locked. New hell threads should at least be about modern 
talking points, and id be happy to volunteer for writing a new 
one.
Feb 25
prev sibling parent monkyyy <crazymonkyyy gmail.com> writes:
On Wednesday, 25 February 2026 at 02:27:35 UTC, Meta wrote:

 https://www.makeuseof.com/why-is-c-programming-language-called-c-what-happened-to-d/


Again, Im quite sure this is ai slop; its bringing up ancient 
history and shamshing it together with (stupid and wrong) rust 
talking points.

This is will be an extra unproductive hell thread and should just 
be locked. New hell threads should at least be about modern 
talking points, and id be happy to volunteer for writing a new 
one.
Feb 25