[eco]

Could you be specific about what in D isn't useable without the GC? You can use manual memory management in D. It has Unique (unique_ptr) and RefCounted (shared_ptr). It has Array. It has malloc and free. None of these use the GC.

People complain about the GC being available to use while simultaneously complaining that to avoid it you have to manage your memory yourself. You can't have it both ways. There is no memory allocation strategy that works best in every situation. Sometimes ref counting is best, sometimes stack allocation, sometimes RAII, sometimes memory pools, sometimes its the GC.

Rust has done some cool work with memory but even it doesn't free the programmer from having to consider and choose which memory allocation/ownership option is going to deliver the best performance on a case-by-case basis.

You're right about Rust and Go having much deeper pockets. D isn't backed by any corporation. It's 100% a community project. Maybe it won't ever gain a significant market share because of this. I don't know.

[infinite8s]

It took python (which also doesn't have a deep-pocketed company backing it) about 15-20 years before it saw widespread adoption.