"Doom"? I mean, you need to be realistic, and honest. Point to the industrial users of D; they're still the same ones as 10 years ago. I haven't identified new ones. Almost all the people at dconf are the same people.

I started a green-fields project in D recently; I thought this is great, it doesn't need to bind with legacy, no C++ troubles, no awkward shim's or build systems... my colleagues were enthusiastic about this direction, but I had a conversation yesterday that started "are you sure this is the right choice?"... because they have demonstrated to themselves in a very short amount of time all the classic problems. They're not zealots; they're just sensible and professional engineers, and trying to make sensible decisions with respect to a business making technology commitments.

There's a certain amount of optimism that just can't sustain 16 years of energy... and it's not like casual effort, I've spent at least 12 years solidly working hard to get things into a workable shape. If that all goes backward by a country mile when I look away for a hot minute; that's very disheartening indeed.

So I guess the answer to your question is; yes, I approach D now with a very different mood. It's changed from one of optimism to one of despair, and I'm definitely in a last-hoorah mindset. There's some important progress going on right now (which should have happened over a decade ago, but I'll grant better late than never!), so that's encouraging, but ancillary matters like extensive VisualD regressions are just something I didn't expect, and/or have time or energy to deal with.

Threads like this are as old as the hills, and if we're not going to start to take them seriously, then when? Maybe it's not that we're not taking them seriously per-se, but nobody knows what to do. Rainer has been doing god's work, but he's still just one guy, and he's doing other stuff right now. He also has no obligation to make his time/energy available; and of-course, you can say that about every person and every aspect of an open source project like this, but to commit to that position is to send a clear message that "D is not for industry". We've gotta do better than that SOMEHOW; or else it's just as I say, this is a small community huddled around a curiosity, a hobby; where just a couple of businesses with juuuust the right set of contextual parameters have been able to make a sustained commitment, but there's no broad path for growth... we've had way more than enough time now to prove otherwise, but we haven't.

This isn't 'doom', it's just being realistic. As the champion of several promising industrial efforts, over 3-4 companies (one with billion dollar budgets), I still haven't been able to seal the deal. And now my own tiny startup where I control literally everything... it still doesn't seem to be possible to land. I guess that's on me; I'm a complete and comprehensive failure! ...but I don't think that's entirely fair, because there's just no comparable success stories that invalidate my experience. Find me some case studies where a motivated individual tried to introduce D to their organisation and were successful?

The ecosystem needs to recognise the key risk projects and strategically direct resources to them. Look at it from the perspective of a business considering a technology commitment; it's a time-bomb (as I've apparently discovered at the most un-timely moment possible)... what do we do to convince ourselves otherwise?