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.

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 )

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

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