11 ms·

The consensus in this thread is that Crystal has lost a lot of steam recently and little is being done. In fact, it's been nearly 6 months since the last releas

by RX14 9y ago

The consensus in this thread is that Crystal has lost a lot of steam recently and little is being done. In fact, it's been nearly 6 months since the last release. As a member of the core team, I'll be honest: this is correct. Manas, Crystal's main commercial backer has had a very tough year and has been unable to donate as much manpower to the project as previous years. The non-manas members of the core team have had difficulty finding time too. This has been a low point in the project, but it's very possible that 2018 will be a different story. Development is picking up right now, extremely basic windows support is just a few days from being merged into master, and the 0.24.1 release is imminent. There will be a blog post regarding this on crystal-lang.org soon.

kyledrake 9y ago
Do you think it's reached the point where Crystal should consider some way to get funding outside of just Manas to allow for some full-time development on the project? I think it deserves full time developers, and there may be sources of untapped funding for potentially doing this if there is interest. It may also make sense (at some point) to consider putting together a nonprofit that could make it easier to get access to this sort of funding in the future.
- RX14 9y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean of "outside of manas" but we have a bountysource [1] which contributes to the hours of the Manas developers to work on Crystal. [1] https://salt.bountysource.com/teams/crystal-lang https://salt.bountysource.com/teams/crystal-lang
  - kyledrake 9y ago
    Well if the sponsor company is having a "tough year" as you said, and that means they can no longer support full-time development of Crystal anymore, it makes sense to put together a structure so that your core team can work on it full time. In the future you're going to need more than an internet tip jar to get access to the better sources of funding you'll need, which are largely institutional. It's going to be the most depressing news ever if we're doomed to a hundred years of toilet dumpster programming languages because Crystal loses steam due to one company's tough year. Let's make sure that dark future never happens.
krylon 9y ago
I have had my eyes on Crystal for a while now, and one of my New Year's Resolutions for 2018 is to learn it. I really hope the project does not collapse. What little I have seen was very, very exciting. I used to love Ruby, I did most my scripting in it for pretty long time. More recently, I have discovered the joys of strong static typing. A language that combines Ruby's expressiveness with type safety and good performance (let's face it - ruby's performance is not that impressive) sounds really sweet. This is definitely a language I would like to get to know. ;-)
- RX14 9y ago
  Thanks for your kind words. If you ever find the time to learn it, you'll find the gitter channel useful for any questions.
hota_mazi 9y ago
Any plans for an IDE? For example, adding support for Crystal in IDEA would go a long way toward facilitating adoption.

by RX14 9y ago

kyledrake 9y ago

Do you think it's reached the point where Crystal should consider some way to get funding outside of just Manas to allow for some full-time development on the project? I think it deserves full time developers, and there may be sources of untapped funding for potentially doing this if there is interest. It may also make sense (at some point) to consider putting together a nonprofit that could make it easier to get access to this sort of funding in the future.

RX14 9y ago
I'm not sure what you mean of "outside of manas" but we have a bountysource [1] which contributes to the hours of the Manas developers to work on Crystal. [1] https://salt.bountysource.com/teams/crystal-lang https://salt.bountysource.com/teams/crystal-lang
- kyledrake 9y ago
  Well if the sponsor company is having a "tough year" as you said, and that means they can no longer support full-time development of Crystal anymore, it makes sense to put together a structure so that your core team can work on it full time. In the future you're going to need more than an internet tip jar to get access to the better sources of funding you'll need, which are largely institutional. It's going to be the most depressing news ever if we're doomed to a hundred years of toilet dumpster programming languages because Crystal loses steam due to one company's tough year. Let's make sure that dark future never happens.

krylon 9y ago

I have had my eyes on Crystal for a while now, and one of my New Year's Resolutions for 2018 is to learn it. I really hope the project does not collapse. What little I have seen was very, very exciting. I used to love Ruby, I did most my scripting in it for pretty long time. More recently, I have discovered the joys of strong static typing. A language that combines Ruby's expressiveness with type safety and good performance (let's face it - ruby's performance is not that impressive) sounds really sweet. This is definitely a language I would like to get to know. ;-)

RX14 9y ago
Thanks for your kind words. If you ever find the time to learn it, you'll find the gitter channel useful for any questions.

hota_mazi 9y ago

Any plans for an IDE? For example, adding support for Crystal in IDEA would go a long way toward facilitating adoption.