> Personally I think Dlang get it right by making GC as a default and provide no GC as an optional feature.
I vehemently disagree. D's GC is the #1 reason for its fade into obscurity, instead of becoming a viable C++ competitor. Now it's completely overshadowed by Rust's success.
The truth is we can only speculate whether the main reason D is less popular now due to its GC or D can be more popular now if it never had GC. Most of the D standard libraries are written in no GC thus performance is not an issue there and D with GC is not a sloth either. Based on programming language (PL) popularity evidence, generally for the similar age language for example Python (1991) vs C++ (1985), and Go (2009) vs Rust (2015), the PL with GC are way more popular than those without GC [1].
Regarding Rust vs D popularity, time will tell. When at the same age of D now, circa 2000s Perl was notably more popular than Python but then Perl lose its steam and fade into obscurity.
Regarding the sibling's comment on borrow checker, D now can support borrow checker and it's just a feature like its many capable features and Rust actually took it from Cyclone [3].
I vehemently disagree. D's GC is the #1 reason for its fade into obscurity, instead of becoming a viable C++ competitor. Now it's completely overshadowed by Rust's success.