I liked D1 more than D2 too. D1 felt to me like a native C#, D2 feels to me more like C++ with GC. And I feel like there's been a lot of effort to satisfy C++ programmers, who will never invest into D anyway because they don't like the idea of GC. The ship has sailed, but I think D would get more traction amongst the Java/C# crowd instead of chasing the C++ crowd which is mostly going for Rust now anyway.