> D was designed by Walter Bright (who played a large role in inflicting C++ on the world)

That's a rather unfair characterization. He wrote the Datalight/Zortech C++ compiler. He was never--that I recall--a big flag-waver for C++.

His company originally was a C++ toolchain shop.

Anyway, I was joking — Walter did one of the first (if not the first?) "Proper" C++ compilers, so the idea of not learning from C++ is rather ironic.