Performance and memory control -- these are the main reasons why people choose C/C++ nowadays and Rust tries to fit in as well. D, as stated in article, is more of Java competitor than C++, because it's slow and use GC.
The code generation for DMD has fallen a bit behind, mostly because I spend my time on other issues these days :-(
Where do people get this from? D compiles down to the same machine code that every other compiled language does and it has similar language semantics to C++. In some cases D is _faster_ because its richer type and effect systems allow for more opportunities for optimization.