5 ms·

I gave up on crystal and realized I should've started with rust in the first place. Crystal wants very badly to displace ruby, in order to leverage the network

by qop 8y ago

I gave up on crystal and realized I should've started with rust in the first place. Crystal wants very badly to displace ruby, in order to leverage the network of developers and generate more and more attention. It's a smart decision on their part. As such, crystal doesn't seem to have munch interest in low-level nitty gritty. "we aren't trying to be C" is a common comment amongst contributors. For game dev, (why I'm bothering with rust) it's too big a turn off to ignore. For web dev, I suspect crystal will ultimately find some success. Lucky framework has some REALLY cool features that rails hackers are going to discover eventually. Unless ruby 3 drops a type system bomb and finds a 10x perf speedup, the continuing progress crystal is making will consume the ruby ecosystem. Congrats on another successful release! Still no exhausting matched, no parallelism, and the spectre of type system changes in the future still looms, but aside from those things, looking good! And windows support. But I personally don't mind windows support being missing. Fuck 'em. Continuing to settle for windows with alternative implementations and things like Wine only gives windows more power as an antihero. Let them be forced to adopt a Linux kernel, no compromise. Edits: typos

RX14 8y ago
Exhaustive matching is on the cards, parallelism is coming, and any type system changes in the future will be minimal. And yes, crystal isn't trying to be C, but you can still do many of the low-level things that you can do in C. It'd be nice to know what exactly you were missing from Crystal.
- qop 8y ago
  It's not the lack of features it's just the difference in what it's meant for. Crystal has a GC, it doesn't have a lot of memory control, etc. She just ain't that type of lady. Crystal isn't what I thought it was. That's not a bad thing necessarily, it's certainly nobody's fault.... For what I have in mind, rust fits my needs much more closely. I want to write a game and learn all about graphics wizardry and rendering pipelines and all the cool Carmackian arts I've been missing out on. My career is winding down, but I think I will retain my gray matter longer if I keep myself busy. If I were thirty years younger and starting out a career in web development, crystal would excite me. The prospect of all that ruby out there that will eventually need to be crystallized... Man, what an opportunity. I don't really have a specific idea in my head of what a crystal for systems development would look like so I'm not sure that I could really provide what's missing from crystal. Rust is made for systems from the start and there appears to be a large number of really smart low-level hackers on the scene already. I'm glad, because I don't know, so at least I can fail amongst a crowd. :)
sam0x17 8y ago
The second windows support is ready I'm going to start poking around with crystal for game dev stuff, cross platform UI, desktop apps, electron replacement, among other things.
- qop 8y ago
  I'll still love you even though you're a windows heathen. Actually, let me ask you something... Are you just targeting windows or are you a windows user also? I can't imagine writing non-dotnet code with windows, but maybe I'm doing it all wrong.
  - sam0x17 8y ago
    I target it. My daily driver is Antergos or Ubuntu depending on how I'm feeling and how crappy GNOME is on any given year.
    - qop 8y ago
      Nice. I browse with gallium on a Chromebook but I have a desktop at home with elementary. A little fancy but tolerable. Still not quite the Year of the Linux Desktop... Any year now....
      - sam0x17 8y ago
        The chromebook thing is fun and I've tried it with a chroot. I've been addicted to IBM/Lenovo trackpoints / little red dot thing since 2004, however, so I'll probably never get away from using ThinkPads. As a kid I played counterstrike and halo 1 with a trackpoint. That's one thing motivating my upcoming purchase of https://www.amazon.com/LANRUO-Pocket-Aluminum-Windows-x7-Z8750/dp/B0721SKXQJ https://www.amazon.com/LANRUO-Pocket-Aluminum-Windows-x7-Z87...

by qop 8y ago

RX14 8y ago

Exhaustive matching is on the cards, parallelism is coming, and any type system changes in the future will be minimal. And yes, crystal isn't trying to be C, but you can still do many of the low-level things that you can do in C. It'd be nice to know what exactly you were missing from Crystal.

qop 8y ago
It's not the lack of features it's just the difference in what it's meant for. Crystal has a GC, it doesn't have a lot of memory control, etc. She just ain't that type of lady. Crystal isn't what I thought it was. That's not a bad thing necessarily, it's certainly nobody's fault.... For what I have in mind, rust fits my needs much more closely. I want to write a game and learn all about graphics wizardry and rendering pipelines and all the cool Carmackian arts I've been missing out on. My career is winding down, but I think I will retain my gray matter longer if I keep myself busy. If I were thirty years younger and starting out a career in web development, crystal would excite me. The prospect of all that ruby out there that will eventually need to be crystallized... Man, what an opportunity. I don't really have a specific idea in my head of what a crystal for systems development would look like so I'm not sure that I could really provide what's missing from crystal. Rust is made for systems from the start and there appears to be a large number of really smart low-level hackers on the scene already. I'm glad, because I don't know, so at least I can fail amongst a crowd. :)

sam0x17 8y ago

The second windows support is ready I'm going to start poking around with crystal for game dev stuff, cross platform UI, desktop apps, electron replacement, among other things.

qop 8y ago
I'll still love you even though you're a windows heathen. Actually, let me ask you something... Are you just targeting windows or are you a windows user also? I can't imagine writing non-dotnet code with windows, but maybe I'm doing it all wrong.
- sam0x17 8y ago
  I target it. My daily driver is Antergos or Ubuntu depending on how I'm feeling and how crappy GNOME is on any given year.
  - qop 8y ago
    Nice. I browse with gallium on a Chromebook but I have a desktop at home with elementary. A little fancy but tolerable. Still not quite the Year of the Linux Desktop... Any year now....
    - sam0x17 8y ago
      The chromebook thing is fun and I've tried it with a chroot. I've been addicted to IBM/Lenovo trackpoints / little red dot thing since 2004, however, so I'll probably never get away from using ThinkPads. As a kid I played counterstrike and halo 1 with a trackpoint. That's one thing motivating my upcoming purchase of https://www.amazon.com/LANRUO-Pocket-Aluminum-Windows-x7-Z8750/dp/B0721SKXQJ https://www.amazon.com/LANRUO-Pocket-Aluminum-Windows-x7-Z87...