The D Programming Language

According to Slashdot, a 1.0 release of the D programming language is to be released sometime soon.

I played with D a few years ago. It's an interesting language, being like C with OO features added, but without the level of complexity of C++.

In some ways, the features are similar to Java, but since D is link-compatible with C, you can directly call the myriad of very mature C libraries, particularly for accessing platform-specific facilities.

It has garbage collection, but also allows the programmer to explicitly free memory.

Contracts are an explicit language feature, as are unit tests, associative arrays and templates. Functions are first-class citizens.

All up, it's an interesting alternative. Well worth a look, if only to see how a different mix of features can flavour the way you program.