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Crystal 0.25.1 released

crystal-lang.org

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Re: Crystal 0.25.1 released

#11

Post by everdev »

Blackstone4 wrote: post #5

Crystal looks interesting although I decided to learn Golang instead. It's more mature and the WIP features described below made me cautious (i.e. what other features are immature). Anyone know when Crystal will get concurrency-a-la-golang? i.e. running concurrent processes in parallel? At the moment I think it's still single-threaded. https://crystal-lang.org/docs/guides/concurrency.html Still no windows support: ht…

I've programmed in both and as far as I can tell here's the best use case for each:

Go - I want to program explicitly and don't mind a little extra code or syntax to do it. I want close to the best performance possible and a single distributable binary. I don't mind being encouraged to "roll my own" api / web app rather than using a framework.

Crystal - I want to feel like I'm writing in Ruby, but with type checking at compile time and much better performance. I don't mind being a little less performant than other compiled languages. I want access to Rails/Sinatra-like frameworks for web/API apps rather than having to "roll my own".

Basically, if you want something quick and fun that can run in production, I love Crystal. If you want something that needs to be custom and highly performant, I love Go.

Re: Crystal 0.25.1 released

#12

Post by RussianCow »

abritinthebay wrote: post #8
sdogruyol wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We use Crystal at RainforestQA to replace our heavy-load / slowish Ruby microservices. It's been great so far and we love it. We're also increasing the adoption to Crystal inside the organization. Also Crystal has a dedicated a wiki page for production users Used in production: https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal/wiki/Used-in-product...

Interesting! I’m surprised you didn’t move to Elixir given the syntax similarities to Ruby

Elixir would probably not have been a huge improvement over Ruby if they switched languages for performance reasons. Elixir is great for many things, but raw number-crunching performance is not one of them.

Re: Crystal 0.25.1 released

#13

Post by asterite »

Thaxll wrote: post #6
sergiotapia wrote: post #2

Anyone using Crystal in production? What do you use it for?

I'm not sure why anyone would actually use it in the current state, unstable, lack of libraries, lack of community and the biggest problem no multi-threading / windows support

You could basically say the same about any language. Just switch the descriptions. For example:

C#: verbose, magical dependency injection, Microsoft, etc.

Ruby: slow

Go: ugly syntax, verbose, if err != nil, etc.

If a language works for you I see no reason not to use it :-)

Re: Crystal 0.25.1 released

#14

Post by RX14 »

abritinthebay wrote: post #8
sdogruyol wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We use Crystal at RainforestQA to replace our heavy-load / slowish Ruby microservices. It's been great so far and we love it. We're also increasing the adoption to Crystal inside the organization. Also Crystal has a dedicated a wiki page for production users Used in production: https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal/wiki/Used-in-product...

Interesting! I’m surprised you didn’t move to Elixir given the syntax similarities to Ruby

While elixir's syntax is inspired by ruby, the semantics are vastly different. That change in semantics is really good for elixir, because it means it can take advantage of the unique properties of the erlang vm, but it's worth noting that crystal is far far closer to ruby than elixir. For better and for worse.

Re: Crystal 0.25.1 released

#15

Post by crystalnewb »

Thaxll wrote: post #6
sergiotapia wrote: post #2

Anyone using Crystal in production? What do you use it for?

I'm not sure why anyone would actually use it in the current state, unstable, lack of libraries, lack of community and the biggest problem no multi-threading / windows support

For the thrill man! If it doesn't have a library you need you create it yourself. Eventually enough people who have the skill to contribute will become interested in Crystal and contribute a library, then one day crystal will replace java. In all seriousness, other than the multithreaded windows support, which libraries are missing?

Re: Crystal 0.25.1 released

#16

Post by 33degrees »

sergiotapia wrote: post #2

Anyone using Crystal in production? What do you use it for?

I'm planning on trying it to replace some Ruby code that updates our elasticsearch index in a background job. It's currently slow and memory hungry and crystal's similarity to Ruby should make it easy to port.

Re: Crystal 0.25.1 released

#17

Post by Blackstone4 »

everdev wrote: post #11
Blackstone4 wrote: post #5

Crystal looks interesting although I decided to learn Golang instead. It's more mature and the WIP features described below made me cautious (i.e. what other features are immature). Anyone know when Crystal will get concurrency-a-la-golang? i.e. running concurrent processes in parallel? At the moment I think it's still single-threaded. https://crystal-lang.org/docs/guides/concurrency.html Still no windows support: ht…

I've programmed in both and as far as I can tell here's the best use case for each: Go - I want to program explicitly and don't mind a little extra code or syntax to do it. I want close to the best performance possible and a single distributable binary. I don't mind being encouraged to "roll my own" api / web app rather than using a framework. Crystal - I want to feel like I'm writing in Ruby, but with type checking…

Great response. [EDIT - as highlighted by the replies below you can't use Rails with Crystal...my fault for misreading the parent] I didn't quite realize that I could use Rails with Crystal. That would be make it more interesting if I knew how to use Rails ^^

Re: Crystal 0.25.1 released

#18

Post by sergiotapia »

k3liutZu wrote: post #4
sergiotapia wrote: post #2

Anyone using Crystal in production? What do you use it for?

Let's make this more generic: Anyone using Crystal? What do you use it for?

I'm specifically interested in production settings, not toy projects. Using something in production is much more interesting.

Re: Crystal 0.25.1 released

#19

Post by MaxBarraclough »

sdogruyol wrote: post #3
sergiotapia wrote: post #2

Anyone using Crystal in production? What do you use it for?

We use Crystal at RainforestQA to replace our heavy-load / slowish Ruby microservices. It's been great so far and we love it. We're also increasing the adoption to Crystal inside the organization. Also Crystal has a dedicated a wiki page for production users Used in production: https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal/wiki/Used-in-product...

What drew you to Crystal?

If you'll forgive the snark, you've moved from one obscure language, to an even more obscure language that even fewer developers know.

What is it about Crystal that outweighs the very boring practical downsides of production use of obscure and immature languages?

Re: Crystal 0.25.1 released

#20

Post by RX14 »

Blackstone4 wrote: post #17
everdev wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've programmed in both and as far as I can tell here's the best use case for each: Go - I want to program explicitly and don't mind a little extra code or syntax to do it. I want close to the best performance possible and a single distributable binary. I don't mind being encouraged to "roll my own" api / web app rather than using a framework. Crystal - I want to feel like I'm writing in Ruby, but with type checking…

Great response. [EDIT - as highlighted by the replies below you can't use Rails with Crystal...my fault for misreading the parent] I didn't quite realize that I could use Rails with Crystal. That would be make it more interesting if I knew how to use Rails ^^

You can't use rails with crystal, the keyword is "rails-like".
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