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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 "

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.

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.