1. bytes are 8 bits
2. shorts are 16 bits
3. ints are 32 bits
4. longs are 64 bits
5. arithmetic is 2's complement
6. IEEE floating point
and a big chunk of wasted time trying to abstract these away and getting it wrong anyway was saved. Millions of people cried out in relief!
Oh, and Unicode was the character set. Not EBCDIC, RADIX-50, etc.
Over the years I've known some engineers who, as a side project, wrote some great software. Nobody was interested in it. They'd come to me and ask why that is? I suggest writing articles about their project, and being active on the forums. Otherwise, who would ever know about it?
They said that was unseemly, and wouldn't do it.
They wound up sad and bitter.
The "build it and they will come" is a stupid Hollywood fraud.
BTW, the income I receive from D is $0. It's my gift. You'll also note that I've suggested many times improvements that could be made to C, copying proven ideas in D. Such as this one:
https://www.digitalmars.com/articles/C-biggest-mistake.html
C++ has already adopted many ideas from D.
To be fair, this one lies on the surface for anyone trying to come up with an improved C. It's one of the first things that gets corrected in nearly all C derivatives.
> C++ has already adopted many ideas from D.
Do you have a list?
Especially for the "adopted from D" bit rather than being a evolutionary and logical improvement to the language.