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How does it feel having your "life's work"[1] becoming big enough to be noticed, but ignored by the mainstream?

You created the first "better C" out there to get any traction, it had a perfect name (B -> C -> D), but due to factors that were partially [2] outside your control [3], D's niche got eaten by Go and Rust.

[1]. The D programming language. [2]. I've seen people blaming the D to D2.0 transition, but D was a niche language before too. I've also seen people blame D for not having an Open Source compiler for years, but neither did Java, and it took off anyways. [3]. Such as Sun's marketing, or the general push to scripting languages between 1995-2010 (such as perl, tcl, PHP, Ruby, Python and Node)

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When I started, I was well aware of:

"Certainty of death. Small chance of success. What are we waiting for?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8joT0oFuGoI

For a language without a megacorp pushing it, D is spectacularly successful. Consider:

1. It's developed by volunteers who work on it for the joy of it without remuneration.

2. People who spend the effort to get past the learning curve find it very pleasing and productive.

3. Other major languages have been continuously copying D's features :-)

4. Corporations that have adopted it for mission critical use have told me that D is their "secret weapon" that allows them to out-maneuver and out-innovate their competitors.

It's like the music business - you don't have to be the Beatles to have a very good career.

Walter, I have been using your products way back since before Zortech, at the time it was the only C++ system that I could get to work with the Phar Lap DOS extender to create big binaries.

Thank you for all your hard work, your products formed the center on my early career, and most of what i know i learned using your tools.

Note I particularly loved "Zed" the text editor that came with the early toolchain.

Regards Tim Hawkins, a grateful hacker.

Welcs!

> It's like the music business - you don't have to be the Beatles to have a very good career.

I think you're too humble here. The quality of D is no lower than the competing products backed by huge corporations.

I also vaguely remember using Symantec C++, it was a refreshing alternative to the competitors of the time, and I had very pleasant experience using it.

> It's like the music business - you don't have to be the Beatles to have a very good career.

That is an inspired quote. I shall steal that and use it whenever anyone argues "why x when y already exists".

>whenever anyone argues "why x when y already exists".

Yes, seen many people argue that, including to me, e.g. about some of my blog posts, which show hand-rolled ways of doing things when a library for that exists. I guess often such people are not doing anything much themselves, and don't get that people can create something in the same area where something else exists, for any number of reasons, even just for sheer fun, love of the field, or for teaching beginners.

or simply to have control over the code.

Yes, good point. When it is not a blog post but real-life project code, I sometimes do it for that reason you mention.

> "Certainty of death. Small chance of success. What are we waiting for?"

You are an inspiration Walter !!

My favorite line from the movie.

> It's like the music business - you don't have to be the Beatles to have a very good career.

For someone who is in both the music business, but also a D programmer for many years, I got to say this was the most inspirational quote I have ever read and it'll be my inspiration in both fields.

> D's niche

That represents a misunderstanding of D. Unlike Go and Rust, which were built for one specific use case (Go for the work done at Google, and Rust for writing a browser), D is an all-around good general purpose programming language. If it did have a niche, it would be as a C replacement, and it is the best available tool for that.

Your comment also implies that D is not used. Download statistics, forum activity, and the existence of users suggests otherwise.

Rust was built to be good for browsers, but also as a general purpose language. We’ve made decisions in the past to not include things the Servo folks wanted, for example.

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