The truth is we can only speculate whether the main reason D is less popular now due to its GC or D can be more popular now if it never had GC. Most of the D st

The truth is we can only speculate whether the main reason D is less popular now due to its GC or D can be more popular now if it never had GC. Most of the D standard libraries are written in no GC thus performance is not an issue there and D with GC is not a sloth either. Based on programming language (PL) popularity evidence, generally for the similar age language for example Python (1991) vs C++ (1985), and Go (2009) vs Rust (2015), the PL with GC are way more popular than those without GC [1]. Regarding Rust vs D popularity, time will tell. When at the same age of D now, circa 2000s Perl was notably more popular than Python but then Perl lose its steam and fade into obscurity. Regarding the sibling's comment on borrow checker, D now can support borrow checker and it's just a feature like its many capable features and Rust actually took it from Cyclone [3]. [1]TIOBE Index for April 2023: https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ [2]Ownership and Borrowing in D: https://dlang.org/blog/2019/07/15/ownership-and-borrowing-in-d/ https://dlang.org/blog/2019/07/15/ownership-and-borrowing-in... [3]Cyclone (programming language): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_(programming_language)