mafinar

mafinar

Thinking about learning Crystal, let's discuss

So I was thinking of trying out Crystal, I had tried it multiple times but left it midway. Now that there’s a book on it and it’s version 1.0 (not that pre-1.0 ever stopped me from learning a language), I was thinking of giving another dive.

My previous experience with the language was good, I mean, I never used Ruby but they do have similarities and I like that type of syntax. It’s pretty fast too. The only con for me was the editor support, compared to that, Nim has much better editor support (It has a pleasurable syntax in front of a performant system but I think I like Crystal syntax more).

Does anyone have any shareable views about Crystal? Any advice/suggestions/feelings on it? Anyone planning on learning it?

Most Liked

OvermindDL1

OvermindDL1

For using a NIF you do not want to use a language that has a GC, because it will conflict with the Erlang BEAM GC unless you are very very very careful about where data is ‘owned’ and that you prevent the GC from running on any of the BEAM threads, but as long as you can verify all that then it’s fine.

On a crystal side I messed with it for a couple small tools, doesn’t seem bad but not really my style. For something C’ish like that I’d go more for Nim or so (though for most things I’d go Rust nowadays anyway). Plus when I last tried it, it still had a GIL, so no parallelization.

AstonJ

AstonJ

I would be up for this! Since I know Ruby hopefully it wouldn’t be too hard getting familiar with Crystal too.

One thing I always thought might be good is using it for Elixir/Erlang nifs, but I think @OvermindDL1 said this may not be a good fit.

Other than that, would it be good to use for things like graphical work? Do you know what the Crystal core team are targeting it at?

(Speaking of the core team, I think I spoke to one or two of them via Twitter a few years ago and they always came across as very nice and very much in the spirit of Ruby… which is always a huge plus :+1:)

AstonJ

AstonJ

Ah yeah I think I remember it being about GC now (I started a dedicated thread about languages that don’t GC here) :blush:

I’d like to try nim too at some point, maybe after rust :smiley:

Where Next?

Popular Backend topics Top

New
bot
So you want to live-reload Rust - fasterthanli.me. Good morning! It is still 2020, and the world is literally on fire , so I guess we c...
New
New
New
New
OvermindDL1
Woooooooo! This is such a huge release for it, and 2 years incoming! In short, the library is now using an updated hyper backend (not j...
New
New
jaeyson
Sorry for the very vague noob question, I really want to ask this: When do we use async or sync code in the context of Elixir? AFAIK gen...
New
New
apoorv-2204
Hi everyone, I’m considering pursuing the Elixir/Erlang certification exam offered by Erlang Solutions and wanted to check in with the c...
New

Other popular topics Top

Devtalk
Reading something? Working on something? Planning something? Changing jobs even!? If you’re up for sharing, please let us know what you’...
1033 17470 383
New
axelson
I’ve been really enjoying obsidian.md: It is very snappy (even though it is based on Electron). I love that it is all local by defaul...
New
New
Rainer
Not sure if following fits exactly this thread, or if we should have a hobby thread… For many years I’m designing and building model air...
New
Exadra37
Oh just spent so much time on this to discover now that RancherOS is in end of life but Rancher is refusing to mark the Github repo as su...
New
gagan7995
API 4 Path: /user/following/ Method: GET Description: Returns the list of all names of people whom the user follows Response [ { ...
New
mafinar
This is going to be a long an frequently posted thread. While talking to a friend of mine who has taken data structure and algorithm cou...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Author Spotlight James Stanier @jstanier James Stanier, author of Effective Remote Work , discusses how to rethink the office as we e...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Rails 7 completely redefines what it means to produce fantastic user experiences and provides a way to achieve all the benefits of single...
New
AstonJ
If you get Can't find emacs in your PATH when trying to install Doom Emacs on your Mac you… just… need to install Emacs first! :lol: bre...
New