I don't think D brought enough new to the table. I had already been coding in c++ for a while and was getting tired of all the little things wrong with c++. While D cleaned up a few things it was already too complex for my taste. And the whole GC thing followed by the D2 fiasco and I lost interest. When dipping my toes into Rust I also got the same vibe from it that I had from D. Too much complexity built in. I guess that made me a sucker for Zig because it is able to combine simplicity, cleverness, clarity and high performance.