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I've been meaning to kick the tires on Crystal, but haven't find the right project yet. Would be curious to hear how people like using it.

jeremycw 7y ago
I think it's great. If you're a fan of Ruby it's hard not to like. I'd say it competes with go in many respects. If Ruby is your daily driver crystal is perfect for cases where you need more performance or where non blocking io would be a good fit.
- viraptor 7y ago
  Or where you want to deploy some small tools without worrying about setting up rbenv and dealing with bundler in your config management.
- mark_l_watson 7y ago
  Thanks, I have wanted to try it. I will find some small project to use Crystal for.
- bks 7y ago
  We are using Crystal for our mail flow monitoring tool at mailflowmonitoring.com - create a free account and you can check it in action. It was a delight to deal with. We also created a Crystal email parser - https://github.com/amrood-labs/mail.cr https://github.com/amrood-labs/mail.cr
furi 7y ago
I've written a couple things in it, mostly little web servers that serve a questionnaire or something, more recently a Lisp and a rudimentary voice chat. I really really like it. Compared to the languages I'm coming from (C/C++ mostly, some Python & C#) the compile time checking is unparalleled. I frequently find that once I've fixed all the compile time errors the program works first time, something I've never experienced in any other imperative language. The standard library is nice too. It's still missing a couple things, for example hash functions better than SHA1 must be accessed by providing their string names to the OpenSSL module at the moment, but overall it's well designed and miles ahead of C/C++ in functionality. My main gripe is the state of Windows support, it works in the Linux subsystem but I spent three hours trying to work out how, for my voice chat program it involved: 1. Turning on something in PowerShell. 2. Installing something from the Windows store. 3. Adding a new repository to Apt. 4. Installing Crystal and all the dependencies of your application. 5. Compiling your application. 6. Installing PulseAudio for Windows. 7. Connecting PulseAudio for Windows to Linux somehow. (I gave up upon opening the guide for how to do this bit). Hardly a process an end user can be expected to do.
- abhijat 7y ago
  What editor do you use for it?
  - renewedrebecca 7y ago
    Visual Studio Code works great for Crystal.
gdotdesign 7y ago
I'm writing Mint (https://www.mint-lang.com https://www.mint-lang.com - https://github.com/mint-lang/mint https://github.com/mint-lang/mint) in Crystal. For me it is a really good experience: for example the last update didn't break anything and I'm able to add features consistently and relatively quickly.
- Kaze404 7y ago
  I took a look at Mint's website and it seemed interesting, but I have to say I was sold when I saw that it already has emacs support. I'll definitely play with it a bit :)
galfarragem 7y ago
An alternative front end for Youtube. Not my project: https://invidio.us https://invidio.us | https://github.com/omarroth/invidious https://github.com/omarroth/invidious

jeremycw 7y ago

I think it's great. If you're a fan of Ruby it's hard not to like. I'd say it competes with go in many respects. If Ruby is your daily driver crystal is perfect for cases where you need more performance or where non blocking io would be a good fit.

viraptor 7y ago
Or where you want to deploy some small tools without worrying about setting up rbenv and dealing with bundler in your config management.
mark_l_watson 7y ago
Thanks, I have wanted to try it. I will find some small project to use Crystal for.
bks 7y ago
We are using Crystal for our mail flow monitoring tool at mailflowmonitoring.com - create a free account and you can check it in action. It was a delight to deal with. We also created a Crystal email parser - https://github.com/amrood-labs/mail.cr https://github.com/amrood-labs/mail.cr

furi 7y ago

I've written a couple things in it, mostly little web servers that serve a questionnaire or something, more recently a Lisp and a rudimentary voice chat. I really really like it. Compared to the languages I'm coming from (C/C++ mostly, some Python & C#) the compile time checking is unparalleled. I frequently find that once I've fixed all the compile time errors the program works first time, something I've never experienced in any other imperative language. The standard library is nice too. It's still missing a couple things, for example hash functions better than SHA1 must be accessed by providing their string names to the OpenSSL module at the moment, but overall it's well designed and miles ahead of C/C++ in functionality. My main gripe is the state of Windows support, it works in the Linux subsystem but I spent three hours trying to work out how, for my voice chat program it involved: 1. Turning on something in PowerShell. 2. Installing something from the Windows store. 3. Adding a new repository to Apt. 4. Installing Crystal and all the dependencies of your application. 5. Compiling your application. 6. Installing PulseAudio for Windows. 7. Connecting PulseAudio for Windows to Linux somehow. (I gave up upon opening the guide for how to do this bit). Hardly a process an end user can be expected to do.

abhijat 7y ago
What editor do you use for it?
- renewedrebecca 7y ago
  Visual Studio Code works great for Crystal.

gdotdesign 7y ago

I'm writing Mint (https://www.mint-lang.com https://www.mint-lang.com - https://github.com/mint-lang/mint https://github.com/mint-lang/mint) in Crystal. For me it is a really good experience: for example the last update didn't break anything and I'm able to add features consistently and relatively quickly.

Kaze404 7y ago
I took a look at Mint's website and it seemed interesting, but I have to say I was sold when I saw that it already has emacs support. I'll definitely play with it a bit :)

galfarragem 7y ago

An alternative front end for Youtube. Not my project: https://invidio.us https://invidio.us | https://github.com/omarroth/invidious https://github.com/omarroth/invidious