>So would you say that GC is the main reason why D did not become very popular as a C++ replacement? I think so yes. There are strong anti-GC sentiments among

>So would you say that GC is the main reason why D did not become very popular as a C++ replacement? I think so yes. There are strong anti-GC sentiments among the crowd which still swears by C++ and did not move on to C# etc. long ago e.g. AAA-game developers. D had other problems in the past (standard library conflict, poor implementation quality) and suffers from poor marketing, lack of corporate support, and the lack of a "killer app". I think few people would argue these things aren't important for breaking into the mainstream. However, yes, I think the GC issue is the biggest one by far. D is a complex, feature-loaded language (IIRC it has templates, compile-time function execution etc. really C++11-grade and more). It naturally does not appeal to people who are attracted by Python, Go, or even C#. It should attract C++ programmers but largely fails at that and I think the primary issue is indeed its GC-based nature.