[mhh__]

I probably learnt it out of a desire to be different, but the language is a incredibly (reassuringly) pragmatic language that was written by a compiler writer(Walter) and a C++ Wizard (Andrei) and it shows. It's still a top down systems language, but you can generate enormous amounts of code for free at compile time, e.g. your parser generator can trivially be written in D but use itself to parse new BNFs and compile them at compile time using CTFE.

The standard library is very professional too, not as wide as some languages but the range idea is very pleasant to work with. Very snappy compiles, best in class interop with C and C++, things like that.