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The absolute killer would be having a (ideally automatic) way to port existing Ruby applications to Crystal, and thus also tap into the existing ecosystem aroun
by m12k 6y ago
The absolute killer would be having a (ideally automatic) way to port existing Ruby applications to Crystal, and thus also tap into the existing ecosystem around Ruby. Though in order for that to really take off, they'd need to be able to port Rails too, which is probably quite tricky (considering how much metaprogramming Rails does for its "magic").
- klelatti 6y agoAbsolutely and given the resources that firms spend on servers running Rails (GitHub, Shopify etc) I could see the effort being put into it - if it's possible. I suspect the metaprogramming issue is really tricky though.
- burlesona 6y agoI think for this to have a realistic chance, you have to have some effort on the rails side to reduce the meta-programming. I doubt that’s going to happen. It is certainly possible to port Ruby applications to Crystal without a total rewrite, but the addition of static types in and of itself means you may be surprised at how much fiddling is required to get the compiler to approve your code.
- klelatti 6y agoHaving done some of this agree 100% with the "surprised at how much fiddling is required". I think in practice that Crystal will have to carve out its own niche distinct from Ruby - and I'm not sure whether the Ruby like syntax is much of an advantage against competing languages.
- chillfox 6y agoIt doesn't have to beat other languages, it just has to enable new domains for people who only like ruby like languages to be successful.