I remember before Rust when Go vs. D was the topic of the day. I even bought a D book and was working through it when Go was announced, and it won me over. The difference maker for me was the standard library; working with Go was just easier, full stop. That and using names like 'int64' instead of 'double', because that's what my brain likes apparently.

100% agree. I really love D the language, if I could go back in time I would find Walter and challenge him that he couldn't write {insert half of the Go std lib packages} into the STD lib for D because its too hard and impossible, in the hopes he takes the bait. I would love to see something like a 'Framework' for D that is maintained by the maintainers, but isn't necessarily the standard library, because people get really touchy when you mess with the STD lib, maybe a way to test the waters before actually adding new packages to it, having an HTTP server OOTB with D would be amazing.