The comparison to Java isn't quite right, as D has structs which are like classes can be on the stack and classes which must always be a reference. So there's a

The comparison to Java isn't quite right, as D has structs which are like classes can be on the stack and classes which must always be a reference. So there's a bit of a syntactic inconsistency, where you might think that "SomeClass object;" would declare an object on the stack like "SomeStruct inst;" would, whereas instead it only declares a null reference. If classes can only be references, the syntax should enforce that more clearly. In Java, everything is a reference, so there is less inconsistency there.