BetterC got a lot of resistance at first, along the lines of who needs it. (BetterC is a subset of D that only relies on the C standard library.) But over time it has accumulated a lot of users, as being C without the troubles. We've gone a step further with ImportC, and now C code can be imported directly into the D compiler, which makes it easy to interface D code to your existing C base.
You seem to have some familiarity with the language. Nonetheless, you're understating a bit the degree of integration with C. You can also: create a shared library in D and call it trivially from C or any language with a FFI, call C shared libraries with little effort from D, compile a C file and add the .o file to your D program compilation command directly, use dstep to write C bindings for you, and directly #inclu…
Just to note: Walter Bright, whom you replied to, is the creator of D.