Comment by hyperman1
5 months ago
I've been on the edge to try out D a few times now, and always decided for No in the end.
For me, it was missing presence in the IT news that did it. D might be great, but it makes no noise.
Rust or go had a lot of articles and blog posts going deep into specific posts, appearing at a regular rate. They tended to appear on e.g this hacker news, or reddit, etc... This caused a drip feed of tutoring, giving me a slow but steady feel for these languagee. There were people tirelessly correcting misinformation. There were non stop code examples of people doing stuff with the language, proving the language usable in all kind of situations.
That's the result of having a lot of money behind it, and smart marketing.
I'd say No on the lot of money, as small scale marketing by a smart person can be enough.
Nginx had the guy translating the manual from russian. Ruby had the person with the weird poetic manuals. Rust had Steve Klabnic and others.
You need someone who is both a technical person and a communicator, being active on fora, doing advent calendars, blog posts, etc... Rust jumped in a hole where D could also fit, and D might be easyer than rust. I think the background interest in D exists, but has nothing to crystallize around.