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Amethyst – Rails inspired web-framework for Crystal language

53 points by ScottWRobinson 11y ago

bshimmin 11y ago
This looks fun, and it's nice to see third-party software starting to appear for Crystal. While parts of it do indeed appear to be inspired by Rails (the routing and the controllers in particular), it feels like it's much more at the Sinatra level right now - by which I mean that Rails, out of the box, does an awful lot more than this, but Sinatra does a similar amount.
ksec 11y ago
To me Crystal is like Ruby 3.0.
- Reefersleep 11y ago
  I'm generally interested in new languages, and when reading about them, I always try to figure out to whom or which contexts they cater to. With Chrystal, I don't know. Is it just "someone who digs the Ruby syntax but prefer static typing, would enjoy more efficient target code and would like to call C directly"? That doesn't seem like a strong value proposition to me, especially with optional static typing (maybe?) coming in Ruby 3.0.
andrewshatnyy 11y ago
TIL: there's Crystal programming language. However it looks more like Sinatra to me. Cool work tho.
coloric 11y ago
Amethyst is getting towards a useful base feature set really quickly. When I looked at it about a week or so ago it didn't have the View portion of MVC, so I'm hoping the project keeps on going with the speedy addition of Rails-like functionality. As for Crystal itself (a new statically type-checked, compiled, Ruby-like language), I look forward to using it more when its a little more complete, as the language is still in flux, and only at version 0.7.x. I did some playing around with Crystal at the weekend, mainly by investigating what it would take to convert a couple of pure Ruby only gems to Crystal. I was stymied somewhat by the Crystal standard library still being a work in progress, for example classes such as Array still need some work if the eventual aim is to provide a similar set of methods to Ruby itself (e.g. the pack method was missing) , and bindings for common libraries like zlib don't seem to exist yet. However, that is no criticism to Crystal - its simply due to the newness of the language, and will undoubtedly improve as more people start using Crystal and contributing.
objectified 11y ago
Not to be confused with Amethyst, the tiling window manager for OS X. https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst
alajarvela 11y ago
What are the actual benefits of using Crystal and Amethyst vs. Rails and Ruby? I kinda missed the whole Crystal hype when it was originally announced.
- davidroetzel 11y ago
  There is no hype (yet). Crystal as a language is still very much a work in progress. That is why Amethyst is kind of a big thing. It is not an alternative to rails (again: yet), but as a real world application it may help shape and advance Crystal.

This looks fun, and it's nice to see third-party software starting to appear for Crystal. While parts of it do indeed appear to be inspired by Rails (the routing and the controllers in particular), it feels like it's much more at the Sinatra level right now - by which I mean that Rails, out of the box, does an awful lot more than this, but Sinatra does a similar amount.

ksec 11y ago

To me Crystal is like Ruby 3.0.

Reefersleep 11y ago
I'm generally interested in new languages, and when reading about them, I always try to figure out to whom or which contexts they cater to. With Chrystal, I don't know. Is it just "someone who digs the Ruby syntax but prefer static typing, would enjoy more efficient target code and would like to call C directly"? That doesn't seem like a strong value proposition to me, especially with optional static typing (maybe?) coming in Ruby 3.0.

andrewshatnyy 11y ago

TIL: there's Crystal programming language. However it looks more like Sinatra to me. Cool work tho.

coloric 11y ago

Amethyst is getting towards a useful base feature set really quickly. When I looked at it about a week or so ago it didn't have the View portion of MVC, so I'm hoping the project keeps on going with the speedy addition of Rails-like functionality. As for Crystal itself (a new statically type-checked, compiled, Ruby-like language), I look forward to using it more when its a little more complete, as the language is still in flux, and only at version 0.7.x. I did some playing around with Crystal at the weekend, mainly by investigating what it would take to convert a couple of pure Ruby only gems to Crystal. I was stymied somewhat by the Crystal standard library still being a work in progress, for example classes such as Array still need some work if the eventual aim is to provide a similar set of methods to Ruby itself (e.g. the pack method was missing) , and bindings for common libraries like zlib don't seem to exist yet. However, that is no criticism to Crystal - its simply due to the newness of the language, and will undoubtedly improve as more people start using Crystal and contributing.

objectified 11y ago

Not to be confused with Amethyst, the tiling window manager for OS X. https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst

alajarvela 11y ago

What are the actual benefits of using Crystal and Amethyst vs. Rails and Ruby? I kinda missed the whole Crystal hype when it was originally announced.

davidroetzel 11y ago
There is no hype (yet). Crystal as a language is still very much a work in progress. That is why Amethyst is kind of a big thing. It is not an alternative to rails (again: yet), but as a real world application it may help shape and advance Crystal.