5 ms·

I'm seeing a lot of complaints about Crystal's slow compile speed. But isn't Rust's compile speed also slow too and it's still being used by many engineers? E

I'm seeing a lot of complaints about Crystal's slow compile speed. But isn't Rust's compile speed also slow too and it's still being used by many engineers? Even then after 1.0 for Rust, I haven't seen any compile speed improvements in that space lately.

jjice 6y ago
In my experience, over the past 2 years there's been quite a good speed up in compile times in Rust, but that's just for my case on an older laptop. On my desktop, there's never been an issue. Long compile times suck, but Crystal and Rust have never put me off because of that. I can wait another few seconds.
- hiljusti 6y ago
  I mean, I agree when build times take more than a minute, I don't care about seconds. Have you used languages that take less than a few seconds (in total) to compile? Also in my experience Crystal compiles simple projects faster than Rust and somewhat comparable to Julia, but much slower than (e.g.) C or Zig, which I think is fine for a language with higher level features. Maybe I haven't done anything big enough with Crystal yet to see the compilation times though? And of course, I expect it will get better over time, there are things that can be done like parallelization and cached incremental compilation results (like Cargo or Gradle do)
void_mint 6y ago
In my experience Compilation speed is an excellent bikeshed that lots of developers complain about if they're evaluating a language. It's an easy thing to say "Well the compilation speed" as a reason to discount a language, but in reality Compilation speed (barring like, truly incredible times for basic things) is a simple Pro/Con in a massive sea of pros and cons.
- parhamn 6y ago
  You can also go further and decide what in said 'sea' is more or less important. Compilation speed greatly effects your ability to iterate in your development process. Depending on your skill level, for most programmers this can be MASSIVE (its literally your development frame rate). Also depends on domain too, for example, something with a ton of IO/sideeffect needs more iterative development than say an algo. Sure there are ultra high experience devs who can make a thousand line edit, send the build and have it run perfectly 4 hours later. Even in that case you need to consider the cost of coding extra defensively to make sure it's right the first time.
  - void_mint 6y ago
    > Compilation speed greatly effects your ability to iterate in your development process. Depending on your skill level, for most programmers this can be MASSIVE Compilation speed is not the only factor in ability to iterate. This argument is the exact bikeshed argument that gets made all the time. Even if your compilation is insanely fast, your build pipeline might be insanely slow. Compilation speed alone isn't enough to really make any value judgements at all, is my entire point. > Sure there are ultra high experience devs who can make a thousand line edit, send the build and have it run perfectly 4 hours later. Even in that case you need to consider the cost of coding extra defensively to make sure it's right the first time. My last job used Ruby on Rails, a language that is touted to have extremely fast iteration speed. That company also chose to have a build process run all tests (unit + system), such that a "build" took 3+ hours. To say, "Ruby on Rails has fast iteration speed and doesn't require a compile step" ignores so much context about what's actually happening, the statement is effectively useless.
    - Fire-Dragon-DoL 6y ago
      Ruby on rails has nothing to do with fast iteration speed. It's incredibly slow and doesn't care a little about the horrible dev experience. I used it professionally for 12 years.
- karmakaze 6y ago
  I don't think you're using bike shed in the right context, but let's not go down that rabbithole. I specifically did evaluate Crystal some time ago, having a set of properties that seemed to hit a sweet spot. I gave it a fair go working on several projects with some of the popular Crystal web frameworks. I went in with full enthusiasm. In the end, only the most basic framework, Kemal (Lightning Fast, Super Simple web framework. Inspired by Sinatra) was tolerable. Definitely not a Rails/Ruby replacement. After that, I favored Phoenix/Elixir for such projects.
  - void_mint 6y ago
    > I don't think you're using bike shed in the right context, but let's not go down that rabbithole. Glad you found that worthwhile to bring up but not extrapolate on :) > specifically did evaluate Crystal some time ago, having a set of properties that seemed to hit a sweet spot. I gave it a fair go working on several projects with some of the popular Crystal web frameworks. I went in with full enthusiasm. In the end, only the most basic framework, Kemal (Lightning Fast, Super Simple web framework. Inspired by Sinatra) was tolerable. Definitely not a Rails/Ruby replacement. After that, I favored Phoenix/Elixir for such projects. Great! Glad you found something that worked out for you! I'm noticing you didn't bring up compilation time in your complaints about Crystal specifically, which seems like a worthwhile thing to point out given we're discussing Crystal compilation times. Regardless, in the spirit of my other recent post, I'm glad you found a tool/language that you enjoy (Phoenix/Elixir)!
    - karmakaze 6y ago
      Sorry I wasn't clear. I first tried to use a more featured framework, Lucky or Amber but only Kemal compiled fast enough. I'm pretty sure they all would have executed the application fine. I have nothing against Crystal. In fact I still think it's great, just not for the kinds of things (e.g. web dev) that I would do in languages like Ruby, Go, or Java. Similarly, Pony is a fantastic language (Rust done right IMO) but I don't have a use for what it/Rust delivers in my typical projects. In short, I think Crystal could benefit from better/clearer positioning, as the digressing discussions in these comments show.
jariel 6y ago
Rust has an 'excuse' for compile speed, in that, the compiler is ostensibly doing 'more work'.
- Trasmatta 6y ago
  I'm not sure what you're implying by this, because the Crystal compiler is doing a lot of work as well. The global type inference is the primary reason for Crystal's compiler speeds, and it's why it's not likely to substantially improve. It's not slow for the sake of being slow.
  - jariel 6y ago
    Java does type inference in a number of places and javac is not slow.
    - linkdd 6y ago
      javac produces Java bytecode, not LLVM IR. javac exists since at least 15 years, Crystal "only" 6 years. Maybe things will get better with time?
    - Trasmatta 6y ago
      Java doesn't do type inference at the level of Crystal. It's not the presence of type inference, it's the fact that almost everything in a Crystal program can be inferred.
- edflsafoiewq 6y ago
  What work would that be?
  - jariel 6y ago
    ? The borrow checker which is literally the reason Rust exists.
    - edflsafoiewq 6y ago

jjice 6y ago

In my experience, over the past 2 years there's been quite a good speed up in compile times in Rust, but that's just for my case on an older laptop. On my desktop, there's never been an issue. Long compile times suck, but Crystal and Rust have never put me off because of that. I can wait another few seconds.

hiljusti 6y ago
I mean, I agree when build times take more than a minute, I don't care about seconds. Have you used languages that take less than a few seconds (in total) to compile? Also in my experience Crystal compiles simple projects faster than Rust and somewhat comparable to Julia, but much slower than (e.g.) C or Zig, which I think is fine for a language with higher level features. Maybe I haven't done anything big enough with Crystal yet to see the compilation times though? And of course, I expect it will get better over time, there are things that can be done like parallelization and cached incremental compilation results (like Cargo or Gradle do)

void_mint 6y ago

In my experience Compilation speed is an excellent bikeshed that lots of developers complain about if they're evaluating a language. It's an easy thing to say "Well the compilation speed" as a reason to discount a language, but in reality Compilation speed (barring like, truly incredible times for basic things) is a simple Pro/Con in a massive sea of pros and cons.

parhamn 6y ago
You can also go further and decide what in said 'sea' is more or less important. Compilation speed greatly effects your ability to iterate in your development process. Depending on your skill level, for most programmers this can be MASSIVE (its literally your development frame rate). Also depends on domain too, for example, something with a ton of IO/sideeffect needs more iterative development than say an algo. Sure there are ultra high experience devs who can make a thousand line edit, send the build and have it run perfectly 4 hours later. Even in that case you need to consider the cost of coding extra defensively to make sure it's right the first time.
- void_mint 6y ago
  > Compilation speed greatly effects your ability to iterate in your development process. Depending on your skill level, for most programmers this can be MASSIVE Compilation speed is not the only factor in ability to iterate. This argument is the exact bikeshed argument that gets made all the time. Even if your compilation is insanely fast, your build pipeline might be insanely slow. Compilation speed alone isn't enough to really make any value judgements at all, is my entire point. > Sure there are ultra high experience devs who can make a thousand line edit, send the build and have it run perfectly 4 hours later. Even in that case you need to consider the cost of coding extra defensively to make sure it's right the first time. My last job used Ruby on Rails, a language that is touted to have extremely fast iteration speed. That company also chose to have a build process run all tests (unit + system), such that a "build" took 3+ hours. To say, "Ruby on Rails has fast iteration speed and doesn't require a compile step" ignores so much context about what's actually happening, the statement is effectively useless.
  - Fire-Dragon-DoL 6y ago
    Ruby on rails has nothing to do with fast iteration speed. It's incredibly slow and doesn't care a little about the horrible dev experience. I used it professionally for 12 years.
karmakaze 6y ago
I don't think you're using bike shed in the right context, but let's not go down that rabbithole. I specifically did evaluate Crystal some time ago, having a set of properties that seemed to hit a sweet spot. I gave it a fair go working on several projects with some of the popular Crystal web frameworks. I went in with full enthusiasm. In the end, only the most basic framework, Kemal (Lightning Fast, Super Simple web framework. Inspired by Sinatra) was tolerable. Definitely not a Rails/Ruby replacement. After that, I favored Phoenix/Elixir for such projects.
- void_mint 6y ago
  > I don't think you're using bike shed in the right context, but let's not go down that rabbithole. Glad you found that worthwhile to bring up but not extrapolate on :) > specifically did evaluate Crystal some time ago, having a set of properties that seemed to hit a sweet spot. I gave it a fair go working on several projects with some of the popular Crystal web frameworks. I went in with full enthusiasm. In the end, only the most basic framework, Kemal (Lightning Fast, Super Simple web framework. Inspired by Sinatra) was tolerable. Definitely not a Rails/Ruby replacement. After that, I favored Phoenix/Elixir for such projects. Great! Glad you found something that worked out for you! I'm noticing you didn't bring up compilation time in your complaints about Crystal specifically, which seems like a worthwhile thing to point out given we're discussing Crystal compilation times. Regardless, in the spirit of my other recent post, I'm glad you found a tool/language that you enjoy (Phoenix/Elixir)!
  - karmakaze 6y ago
    Sorry I wasn't clear. I first tried to use a more featured framework, Lucky or Amber but only Kemal compiled fast enough. I'm pretty sure they all would have executed the application fine. I have nothing against Crystal. In fact I still think it's great, just not for the kinds of things (e.g. web dev) that I would do in languages like Ruby, Go, or Java. Similarly, Pony is a fantastic language (Rust done right IMO) but I don't have a use for what it/Rust delivers in my typical projects. In short, I think Crystal could benefit from better/clearer positioning, as the digressing discussions in these comments show.

jariel 6y ago

Rust has an 'excuse' for compile speed, in that, the compiler is ostensibly doing 'more work'.

Trasmatta 6y ago
I'm not sure what you're implying by this, because the Crystal compiler is doing a lot of work as well. The global type inference is the primary reason for Crystal's compiler speeds, and it's why it's not likely to substantially improve. It's not slow for the sake of being slow.
- jariel 6y ago
  Java does type inference in a number of places and javac is not slow.
  - linkdd 6y ago
    javac produces Java bytecode, not LLVM IR. javac exists since at least 15 years, Crystal "only" 6 years. Maybe things will get better with time?
  - Trasmatta 6y ago
    Java doesn't do type inference at the level of Crystal. It's not the presence of type inference, it's the fact that almost everything in a Crystal program can be inferred.
edflsafoiewq 6y ago
What work would that be?
- jariel 6y ago
  ? The borrow checker which is literally the reason Rust exists.
  - edflsafoiewq 6y ago