I think a big part was the licensing issue. Before April 2017, the official compiler back-end was some non-open-source license (dunno which). In this day and ag

I think a big part was the licensing issue. Before April 2017, the official compiler back-end was some non-open-source license (dunno which). In this day and age I couldn't see using a compiler that wasn't free software. But now that's been fixed --- the reference compiler is now all Boost licensed, and GDC (the GCC front-end) has even been officially accepted into GCC (woot!). Also, I'm not sure how long the standard package repository and module installer (dub) has been around. But that's here now too. I think the future of D looks very bright. I'm still learning, but to me D seems somewhat similar to Python, except: * it's compiled to native code instead of interpreted * it's syntax uses curlies/semis instead of whitespace * it's statically typed (but has type inference so you can type many variables as just "auto" and the type is inferred) * it has [dub](https://code.dlang.org/ https://code.dlang.org/) instead of the [cheeseshop](https://cheeseshop.python.org https://cheeseshop.python.org) (of course, the cheeseshop is currently much larger) Anyhow, very much enjoying D so far. :) I expect D's popularity to grow as more people desire a statically-typed, compiled language, with the convenience of a GC and easy access to native (C) libraries.