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> It's not often discussed on HN, which is a shame. It absolutely is. In fact, it's how I found out about the language. There's been several conversations abo

> It's not often discussed on HN, which is a shame. It absolutely is. In fact, it's how I found out about the language. There's been several conversations about it and each release is posted on HN. For example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27903288 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27903288 Crystal as a language is fantastic IMO. The type system literally forces you to consider race-conditions. Never had a language make me eat my vegetables in such a way. The code runs incredibly fast (on par with Rust and Go). However, like the points you listed, it's hasn't "gone critical." It needs the basics to get even a hundredth of a percent of traction: cross-platform, IDE support, and some "killer" use-case.

technion 4y ago
I also don't agree that it doesn't come up on HN. If we look at all the recent Ruby threads: Five hours ago, we were asked "Is Rails still relevant", and one answer is that crystal is a better option: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31170481 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31170481 Three days ago, we had a post on Sorbet and multiple replies push people back to Crystal: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31159010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31159010 And another thread thirty days ago about Stripe's use of Ruby has multiple suggestions people use crystal: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30833555 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30833555 The pattern goes back a long way and /r/ruby sees regular announcements for new Crystal releases. On this thread someone notes they had a Crystal talk at Ruby conference. I refer to these because it's appears that several people in this thread have noted a lack of hype and interest, but I feel there's a lot of hype - it's just that it seems to be heavily directed at the existing Ruby users which may not be excited just because it "looks like Ruby". I can't take my existing Rails apps and just compile them with Crystal. If I'm going to use a different language, a whole range of options exist. I'd consider Elixir, Clojure, Rust or Python. Meanwhile, there are plenty of people pushing me not to use Ruby over concerns about performance, typing, and things that Crystal claims to solve. If the Crystal community wants to reach those, they need to be aware of who is currently avoiding Ruby and thus the current outreach.
- AlchemistCamp 4y ago
  > I'd consider Elixir, Clojure, Rust or Python. Why would you consider Python?

technion 4y ago

I also don't agree that it doesn't come up on HN. If we look at all the recent Ruby threads: Five hours ago, we were asked "Is Rails still relevant", and one answer is that crystal is a better option: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31170481 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31170481 Three days ago, we had a post on Sorbet and multiple replies push people back to Crystal: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31159010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31159010 And another thread thirty days ago about Stripe's use of Ruby has multiple suggestions people use crystal: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30833555 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30833555 The pattern goes back a long way and /r/ruby sees regular announcements for new Crystal releases. On this thread someone notes they had a Crystal talk at Ruby conference. I refer to these because it's appears that several people in this thread have noted a lack of hype and interest, but I feel there's a lot of hype - it's just that it seems to be heavily directed at the existing Ruby users which may not be excited just because it "looks like Ruby". I can't take my existing Rails apps and just compile them with Crystal. If I'm going to use a different language, a whole range of options exist. I'd consider Elixir, Clojure, Rust or Python. Meanwhile, there are plenty of people pushing me not to use Ruby over concerns about performance, typing, and things that Crystal claims to solve. If the Crystal community wants to reach those, they need to be aware of who is currently avoiding Ruby and thus the current outreach.

AlchemistCamp 4y ago
> I'd consider Elixir, Clojure, Rust or Python. Why would you consider Python?