- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modula-3
- http://joeduffyblog.com/2015/11/03/blogging-about-midori/
- http://www.projectoberon.com/ (see https://www.astrobe.com)
- Eric Bier Demonstrates Cedar (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_dt7NG38V4)
There are a lot of people in 2021 who - for whatever reason - feel like they need to program personal computers without using GC. As you point history shows that's a lot less true than people think, but nevertheless - that is the sentiment.
Dlang tries spends a lot of effort trying to attract these people, by making more and more of the stdlib nogc, having @nogc annotations, experimenting with deterministic manual memory management etc etc. But I feel like they'll never convert most of them.
I also agree with the sentiment, the language issues with some not so well worked out features should be fixed, instead of trying to please everyone.
This. For average programmers like myself, latest and fanciest language features are of little value. C++ and (unfortunately) D are in the same quest: to incorporate every programing language paradigm available, the extra complexity be damned. In the specific case of D, I'd rather have a good assortment of native D libraries than more bells and whistles added to the language.