Why Crystal is the most promising programming language of 2018
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Re: Why Crystal is the most promising programming language of 2018
#2Re: Why Crystal is the most promising programming language of 2018
#3Well, here is why not. AFAK, it still lacks support for parallelism / multicore programming. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Once it has that, I'll be happy to learn it, but currently it's concurrency seems to be as limited as Racket's. That's a big obstacle for early adoption, since the trend is going towards 64 cores sooner than later. My current CPU already has 8 physical cores and 16 logical cores, and I'd like to use all of them.
This is not a critique on Crystal or Racket, I understand perfectly well the challenges that parallelism poses to language implementers. But it's definitely a massive shortcoming.
Re: Why Crystal is the most promising programming language of 2018
#4Well, here is why not. AFAK, it still lacks support for parallelism / multicore programming. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Once it has that, I'll be happy to learn it, but currently it's concurrency seems to be as limited as Racket's. That's a big obstacle for early adoption, since the trend is going towards 64 cores sooner than later. My current CPU already has 8 physical cores and 16 logical cores, and I'd like t…
> AFAK, it still lacks support for parallelism / multicore programming.
Yeah this is a deal-breaker. And it's kinda weird that the article is pitching Crystal as a replacement for Go, Elixir, and Rust with that kind of limitation.
I guess this is just the ramp-up into one more trip around the giant ferris-wheel that is language popularity cycles.
Re: Why Crystal is the most promising programming language of 2018
#5> Recently Crystal shocked the world when it rose from 60th place to 32nd place in the Tiobe index in a mere month
Meteoric! Because we all know the the Tiobe index is incredibly accurate.
Would have been nice to see some code examples, rather than just handwavey bullets points that you could write about nearly every up-and-coming programming language.
Re: Why Crystal is the most promising programming language of 2018
#6> Because Crystal is compiled, it is impossible to have a true REPL
Impossible, or just hard?
Re: Why Crystal is the most promising programming language of 2018
#7> Nothing else puts all of these ingredients together (compile-time macros, static typing, C-like speed, Ruby-like syntax, gem-like package ecosystem, native binary compilation, fibers, and cross-platform support)
Something I've noticed when reading 'X language is great' posts, the comparison is usually limited to a narrow subset of what's out there.
As an example, I think D meets all of the above criteria. Maybe I'll give on Ruby-like syntax, which D instead has more of a C-like syntax with adjustments to improve compile time.
There are lots of great languages out there and it really irritates me when I see claims of 'X is better than Y or Z' and it seems no effort is made to see what else already exists with the same (or greater) set of features.
Re: Why Crystal is the most promising programming language of 2018
#8I'm reading through the list and it looks like D has all these, except the ninth one ("meteoric rise in popularity"). However, it does have binary compatibility with C and the binaries are much leaner.
Re: Why Crystal is the most promising programming language of 2018
#9> Recently Crystal shocked the world when it rose from 60th place to 32nd place in the Tiobe index in a mere month Meteoric! Because we all know the the Tiobe index is incredibly accurate. Would have been nice to see some code examples, rather than just handwavey bullets points that you could write about nearly every up-and-coming programming language.
Also, "meteoric rise" is kind of silly. That's not how meteors work.
Re: Why Crystal is the most promising programming language of 2018
#10Well, here is why not. AFAK, it still lacks support for parallelism / multicore programming. Please correct me if I'm wrong. Once it has that, I'll be happy to learn it, but currently it's concurrency seems to be as limited as Racket's. That's a big obstacle for early adoption, since the trend is going towards 64 cores sooner than later. My current CPU already has 8 physical cores and 16 logical cores, and I'd like t…
Are you sure Racket doesn't support parallelism?