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Exactly. As a Ruby developer, Crystal makes me itch. It jettisons exactly what Ruby is valuable to me for: quickly and dynamically building fluent-feeling libra

Exactly. As a Ruby developer, Crystal makes me itch. It jettisons exactly what Ruby is valuable to me for: quickly and dynamically building fluent-feeling libraries and tools. It's fast, but I don't need fast--if I don't need Ruby's metaprogramming, I have other, better, established languages to use for those tasks. (Kotlin, C#, Rust, whatever.) Elixir is kind-of in the same boat for me. I think it's neat and has its place, and BEAM is really cool, but it doesn't scratch the Ruby itch for me. I just don't care about it looking vaguely like Ruby if it's not actually gonna be Ruby.

dragonwriter 9y ago
Elixir is, in my view, an even-more-awesome Erlang with an unfortunate and distracting cosmetic resemblance to Ruby. Ruby is awesome, as is Elixir, but very different awesome.
- eropple 9y ago
  Agreed, to be clear. I think Elixir is cool. It just keeps getting framed as a "better Ruby"--though Phoenix might be (probably is) a better Rails.
sam0x17 9y ago
Have you used a recent (2017) version of Crystal? Quickly building fluent-feeling libraries and tools is exactly my use case for Crystal. For me, everything that Ruby is valuable for is retained. I'm able to do all the things I did in Ruby just fine, and it prevents me from doing a lot of things I shouldn't have been doing. We recently migrated our app from Rails to Crystal (using the Amber framework) and our code base is now 2/3rds the size and we eliminated hundreds of bugs in the process simply from static typing and explicit nil handling. Our response times are also now all under 30ms where we were at 100ms+ before.
- eropple 9y ago
  Until I can perform runtime define_method calls and dynamically construct classes, it doesn't matter what Crystal does. It's fundamentally antithetical to my needs. (JavaScript isn't, but JavaScript is kind of clunky.) I have Kotlin, C#, C++, and Rust if I need static typing. Ruby is for when I don't.
  - yorwba 9y ago
    How late at runtime do these dynamic definitions need to be possible? Just at startup or also after the program has been running for a while? I occasionally wonder whether it might be possible to accommodate more dynamic language features with a compiler that treats them like a macro system that is expanded statically, such that no actual dynamicism is necessary at runtime.
    - sam0x17 9y ago
      This is exactly what crystal does
  - sam0x17 9y ago
    You can do all of that with really easy to write crystal macros.
    - eropple 9y ago
      You can dynamically build at runtime an HTTP client from an OpenAPI spec (unavailable until runtime, to be clear), method-by-method, using macros? Tell me more.
      - sam0x17 9y ago
        Got me there. First time I've ever in my life heard of a legitimate example where you really do need dynamic methods.
        eropple 9y ago
        If you're doing stuff with OpenAPI (as I've been doing over the last few weeks), it becomes a pressing thing. =( Generated clients usually are pretty awful, you usually have to generate your own (because they don't publish gems when their APIs change, which is why I've written online-generated ones!), and once you've completed the bootstrap process for an HTTP client, it's as fast as any other Ruby thing. Which is not the fastest out there by a long shot--though JRuby helps--but is Fast Enough for most stuff. I'm also not sure Crystal can implement an active record pattern off of a database? (Though I am not personally the type to go with that, I prefer row mappers.)
- semperdark 9y ago
  Wow. I've been checking in on the Crystal ecosystem every few weeks, but I somehow missed Amber. It feels like someone has finally cracked the code that made Rails great.

dragonwriter 9y ago

Elixir is, in my view, an even-more-awesome Erlang with an unfortunate and distracting cosmetic resemblance to Ruby. Ruby is awesome, as is Elixir, but very different awesome.

eropple 9y ago
Agreed, to be clear. I think Elixir is cool. It just keeps getting framed as a "better Ruby"--though Phoenix might be (probably is) a better Rails.

sam0x17 9y ago

Have you used a recent (2017) version of Crystal? Quickly building fluent-feeling libraries and tools is exactly my use case for Crystal. For me, everything that Ruby is valuable for is retained. I'm able to do all the things I did in Ruby just fine, and it prevents me from doing a lot of things I shouldn't have been doing. We recently migrated our app from Rails to Crystal (using the Amber framework) and our code base is now 2/3rds the size and we eliminated hundreds of bugs in the process simply from static typing and explicit nil handling. Our response times are also now all under 30ms where we were at 100ms+ before.

eropple 9y ago
Until I can perform runtime define_method calls and dynamically construct classes, it doesn't matter what Crystal does. It's fundamentally antithetical to my needs. (JavaScript isn't, but JavaScript is kind of clunky.) I have Kotlin, C#, C++, and Rust if I need static typing. Ruby is for when I don't.
- yorwba 9y ago
  How late at runtime do these dynamic definitions need to be possible? Just at startup or also after the program has been running for a while? I occasionally wonder whether it might be possible to accommodate more dynamic language features with a compiler that treats them like a macro system that is expanded statically, such that no actual dynamicism is necessary at runtime.
  - sam0x17 9y ago
    This is exactly what crystal does
- sam0x17 9y ago
  You can do all of that with really easy to write crystal macros.
  - eropple 9y ago
    You can dynamically build at runtime an HTTP client from an OpenAPI spec (unavailable until runtime, to be clear), method-by-method, using macros? Tell me more.
    - sam0x17 9y ago
      Got me there. First time I've ever in my life heard of a legitimate example where you really do need dynamic methods.
      - eropple 9y ago
        If you're doing stuff with OpenAPI (as I've been doing over the last few weeks), it becomes a pressing thing. =( Generated clients usually are pretty awful, you usually have to generate your own (because they don't publish gems when their APIs change, which is why I've written online-generated ones!), and once you've completed the bootstrap process for an HTTP client, it's as fast as any other Ruby thing. Which is not the fastest out there by a long shot--though JRuby helps--but is Fast Enough for most stuff. I'm also not sure Crystal can implement an active record pattern off of a database? (Though I am not personally the type to go with that, I prefer row mappers.)
semperdark 9y ago
Wow. I've been checking in on the Crystal ecosystem every few weeks, but I somehow missed Amber. It feels like someone has finally cracked the code that made Rails great.