Crystal 1.0 – What to expect • Hacker News Board

Re: Crystal 1.0 – What to expect

#11

Post by terracatta » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 7:35 PM UTC

I love the idea of Crystal but I remember reading that compilation times can balloon very quickly for moderately sized apps.

Can anyone who writes Crystal today dispel or confirm that information? I imagine the inferred typing makes building a fast compiler really tough.

Re: Crystal 1.0 – What to expect

#12

Post by mfkp » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 7:37 PM UTC

robrtsql wrote: post #10

jug wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for mentioning Amber! I assume it's this project: https://amber-lang.net/ I've long wanted to get into Smalltalk and this looks like a very nice, modern way of doing so.

I think they meant this web framework: https://amberframework.org/ There are two pretty big web frameworks in the Crystal world right now, one is Kemal which strives to be the Sinatra or Flask of the Crystal world (lightweight, supporting plugins), and the other is Crystal which is trying to be the Ruby on Rails or Django of the Crystal world (full-featured, opinionated).

The other main one is https://luckyframework.org/ (also going for more of a full-featured Rails type framework)

Re: Crystal 1.0 – What to expect

#13

Post by antattack » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 7:39 PM UTC

Nim vs Crystal is an interesting read if not to just compare syntax (three articles span 3 years so I wonder how much has changed since):

https://framework.embarklabs.io/news/2019/11/18/nim-vs-cryst...

Re: Crystal 1.0 – What to expect

#14

Post by chrisseaton » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 7:39 PM UTC

terracatta wrote: post #11

I love the idea of Crystal but I remember reading that compilation times can balloon very quickly for moderately sized apps. Can anyone who writes Crystal today dispel or confirm that information? I imagine the inferred typing makes building a fast compiler really tough.

Was that possibly before they backed off from global type inference? I think that was the cause of long compilation times. They require you to annotate a few types manually now which is an effective cut.

Re: Crystal 1.0 – What to expect

#15

Post by neolog » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 7:39 PM UTC

How does it compare to Nim?

Re: Crystal 1.0 – What to expect

#16

Post by blacksmoke16 » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 7:40 PM UTC

robrtsql wrote: post #10

jug wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for mentioning Amber! I assume it's this project: https://amber-lang.net/ I've long wanted to get into Smalltalk and this looks like a very nice, modern way of doing so.

I think they meant this web framework: https://amberframework.org/ There are two pretty big web frameworks in the Crystal world right now, one is Kemal which strives to be the Sinatra or Flask of the Crystal world (lightweight, supporting plugins), and the other is Crystal which is trying to be the Ruby on Rails or Django of the Crystal world (full-featured, opinionated).

There are also other options: https://github.com/veelenga/awesome-crystal#web-frameworks.

https://athenaframework.org is pretty unique. It's one of the more flexible frameworks IMO. It was inspired by Symfony and Spring, so takes a bit of a different approach as most other frameworks come from a more Ruby background.

Re: Crystal 1.0 – What to expect

#17

Post by kureikain » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 7:40 PM UTC

Anyone want to try out Crystal and not familiar with a static type system, please don't let that discourage you. Crystal type infering is really good to the point you go pretty far without any manually type def.

To me, dealing with JSON is always a challenge in truly static type language. Crystal solved it very nicely https://crystal-lang.org/api/1.0.0/JSON/Serializable.html

Re: Crystal 1.0 – What to expect

#18

Post by woodruffw » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 7:41 PM UTC

Congratulations to the Crystal team. I've been following Crystal's development since around 2016, and it's been a long journey for a large group of incredibly dedicated contributors.

One step closer to a world of static, Ruby-like expressivity!

Re: Crystal 1.0 – What to expect

#19

Post by genuine_smiles » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 7:44 PM UTC

tomc1985 wrote: post #5

Really happy to see this go 1.0. Between Crystal and Zig it's nice to see C++/Rust get some competition

Would a developer looking a Zig/C++/Rust really also consider Crystal?

I figured Crystal was for Ruby developers who want a good static type system.

Re: Crystal 1.0 – What to expect

#20

Post by edflsafoiewq » Mon, Mar 22, 2021, 7:45 PM UTC

terracatta wrote: post #11

I love the idea of Crystal but I remember reading that compilation times can balloon very quickly for moderately sized apps. Can anyone who writes Crystal today dispel or confirm that information? I imagine the inferred typing makes building a fast compiler really tough.

I just downloaded 1.0 and tried hello world. It took over 2 seconds. I hope that's just some kind of bug.