The richness and flexibility of compile-time features almost make it feel like a lisp, with the slight downgrade of sometimes working on strings of source code instead of sexps. Regardless, like the article says, D's metaprogramming alone is worth the entry price of reading a few books or tutorials about the language.
The way you characterize D's metaprogrammability is exactly how I would put it too. It's hard to describe but D just makes metaprogramming so fun and easy compared to anything besides Lisp and I find it sorely missing when working with most other languages.
http://jordi.inversethought.com/blog/advent-of-d/
The richness and flexibility of compile-time features almost make it feel like a lisp, with the slight downgrade of sometimes working on strings of source code instead of sexps. Regardless, like the article says, D's metaprogramming alone is worth the entry price of reading a few books or tutorials about the language.