Crystal 0.33 • Hacker News Board

Re: Crystal 0.33

#11

Post by Buttons840 » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 2:32 AM UTC

fermuch wrote: post #6

appleiigs wrote: post #3

I wonder why Ruby users don’t flock to Crystal, and Python users to Julia. With all the whining about performance and types, they just stay put.

I've seen a lot of people (myself included) going from ruby to elixir

As an outsider, a non-Ruby-user, I find it strange that Ruby users seem to be migrating to languages that are similar only in syntax but vastly different in nearly every other imaginable way.

Do Ruby users care only about syntax?

Maybe I'm not so different? Maybe my preference for ALGOL syntax just gives me more language options?

Re: Crystal 0.33

#12

Post by eropple » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 2:44 AM UTC

dyeje wrote: post #4

appleiigs wrote: post #3

I wonder why Ruby users don’t flock to Crystal, and Python users to Julia. With all the whining about performance and types, they just stay put.

Most of the people whining about performance and types probably don't actually use Ruby day to day.

I dunno. I used to use a lot of Ruby. The lack of types regularly made my life a real pain. I ended up building frameworks[0] tied really tightly to dry-struct to try to work around that, and it wasn't great.

I use TypeScript for everything I used to use Ruby for, save for the occasional file munging inside of `pry`.

[0]: https://github.com/modern-project/modern-ruby

Re: Crystal 0.33

#13

Post by tyingq » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 3:12 AM UTC

luhego wrote: post #7

appleiigs wrote: post #3

I wonder why Ruby users don’t flock to Crystal, and Python users to Julia. With all the whining about performance and types, they just stay put.

I use Python and I just don't like 1-based indexed languages. I would say that a better replacement for Python(at least for backend) is Go.

Did you have a look at nim?

Re: Crystal 0.33

#14

Post by robbseaton » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 3:23 AM UTC

appleiigs wrote: post #3

I wonder why Ruby users don’t flock to Crystal, and Python users to Julia. With all the whining about performance and types, they just stay put.

n=1 but I am a Rubyist migrating to Julia, FWIW.

Re: Crystal 0.33

#15

Post by dnautics » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 3:34 AM UTC

Buttons840 wrote: post #11

fermuch wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen a lot of people (myself included) going from ruby to elixir

As an outsider, a non-Ruby-user, I find it strange that Ruby users seem to be migrating to languages that are similar only in syntax but vastly different in nearly every other imaginable way. Do Ruby users care only about syntax? Maybe I'm not so different? Maybe my preference for ALGOL syntax just gives me more language options?

It's a "get hooked with the syntax, stay for the features" situation. Elixir leverages the incredible robustness of the erlang virtual machine. So much so, that for me, anyways, it's hard to imagine using anything else without losing sleep anymore.

Re: Crystal 0.33

#16

Post by faitswulff » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 3:37 AM UTC

The most interesting Crystal project I've heard of is this x86-64 OS: https://www.reddit.com/r/crystal_programming/comments/djoy8a...

If Crystal can make a case for itself as a systems programming language, I'm very interested.

Re: Crystal 0.33

#17

Post by nine_k » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 4:00 AM UTC

luhego wrote: post #7

appleiigs wrote: post #3

I wonder why Ruby users don’t flock to Crystal, and Python users to Julia. With all the whining about performance and types, they just stay put.

I use Python and I just don't like 1-based indexed languages. I would say that a better replacement for Python(at least for backend) is Go.

Go removes so much of the expressive power that writing it after Python is a bit of a pain.

OTOH I realize that many people don't use that expressive power and are happy with copy-pasting stuff.

Re: Crystal 0.33

#18

Post by nobleach » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 4:02 AM UTC

jwhiz22 wrote: post #8

appleiigs wrote: post #3

I wonder why Ruby users don’t flock to Crystal, and Python users to Julia. With all the whining about performance and types, they just stay put.

Crystal does not have mature web frameworks like Rails.

It doesn't have battle-tested everything and the kitchen sink like Rails. It has plenty of frameworks though. They just happen to be far more like ExpressJS for node, or Sinatra for Ruby. In this day of microservice/thin JSON API-style apps, Rails might be overkill. I'm not saying it's bad, it just might be a little much.

Re: Crystal 0.33

#19

Post by jitl » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 4:15 AM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #17

luhego wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Python and I just don't like 1-based indexed languages. I would say that a better replacement for Python(at least for backend) is Go.

Go removes so much of the expressive power that writing it after Python is a bit of a pain. OTOH I realize that many people don't use that expressive power and are happy with copy-pasting stuff.

I’m waiting for generics to land before I return to Go.

Re: Crystal 0.33

#20

Post by jitl » Sat, Feb 15, 2020, 4:17 AM UTC

eropple wrote: post #12

dyeje wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the people whining about performance and types probably don't actually use Ruby day to day.

I dunno. I used to use a lot of Ruby. The lack of types regularly made my life a real pain. I ended up building frameworks[0] tied really tightly to dry-struct to try to work around that, and it wasn't great. I use TypeScript for everything I used to use Ruby for, save for the occasional file munging inside of `pry`. [0]: https://github.com/modern-project/modern-ruby

This is pretty much the route I’ve taken, except I used an internal framework at Airbnb for typings instead of “dry-...”.

These days I write Typescript. I’m excited for Deno, which looks like it’ll solve most of the Node bullshit.