Most components of the D standard library (Phobos) use garbage collection by default (when I last checked). This unfortunately removes it as a contender in the same space as Zig and Rust. And once you move to the GC space, there are a truckload of GC languages - it is the non-GC ones that are rare.
IMHO stdlib GC was one of the major barriers stopping D in the system programming space.
Most components of the D standard library (Phobos) use garbage collection by default (when I last checked). This unfortunately removes it as a contender in the same space as Zig and Rust. And once you move to the GC space, there are a truckload of GC languages - it is the non-GC ones that are rare.
IMHO stdlib GC was one of the major barriers stopping D in the system programming space.