Even all that aside, comparing and contrasting contemporaries in a similar space is natural. That's just, like, scholarship, you know? Imagine someone who's defending their thesis responding to a question about alternatives to their research by getting into a big huff about it. That'd be pretty silly, right?
And the comments about "PL tribalism" are a little odd, then, since the most tribalistic behavior we have evidence for in this thread is someone reacting exactly like this. As a fan of Walter's contributions, including D, in the past I've gone so far as to put a non-trivial amount of effort into polishing the articles on D, Walter, and Digital Mars on Wikipedia. Meanwhile, I've never even written a Zig program, dude; if there's a tribe I belong to, it's not Zig.