[Sathi]

Really interested to know what other compile-to-native-code languages that they evaluated and why they chose D over other alternatives. Anyone knows if such comparison is available?

[steveklabnik]

Andrei is a well-known member of both the C++ and D communities; he's probably #2 after the language's creator, Walter Bright.

So I'd imagine it has something to do with said expertise.

[X8FntewI]

There is another project at facebook which uses Haskell [1]. It's a DSL that replaces an interpreter which was written in C++. Performance was one of the reasons for replacing it, and the talk includes an comparison of the performance of the two approaches.

[1] http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/home/simon-marlow