Re:Apple is looking for engineers to convert its code from C...
by WalterBright on Saturday March 21, 2020 @03:11PM
(#22649064)
We looked hard at an automatic ref counting system. We could not find a way to make it 100% memory safe while allowing pointer access for efficiency. An O/B system makes this workable.
D doesn't change the syntax for O/B.
Had D gone with a (deterministic) ref counting like Swift and Vala, it would've been much more popular I think. Such memory management keeps the syntax cute :) while not sacrificing the determinism.