This is not a new year’s resolution

https://crystal-lang.org/2017/12/19/this-is-not-a-new-years-resolution.html

by thibaut_barrere • 9 years ago

99 42 9 years ago

crystal-lang.org

bovermyer• 9 years ago

It feels like Crystal is coming up more frequently on HN and Reddit than it did in the past couple years.

I'd be curious to see actual usage numbers as they've changed over time.

_raul• 9 years ago

I struggle to estimate any dev work beyond a few weeks, so I wonder if some of these estimates may be wishful thinking too - maybe the Manas.Tech folks have a good sense of the theory behind the work that’s left though, in which case it’s only (“only”) a matter of implementing it. In any case, I wish them the best and hope that they can release 1.0 next year!

RX144• 9 years ago

At least for the concurrency work, there's been a lot of groundwork done for it already, and even a working prototype - albeit with a much larger scheduling overhead than we would like.

I suspect that it's a mix of both, these hours numbers are somewhat pulled out of a hat but the concrete of what we actually want to do and how to go about it is known so they won't be wildly off. The manas guys will know the details though.

imtringued• 9 years ago

Wishful thinking:

Could modern programming languages adopt isolated heaps with message passing like Erlang does? This is the easiest solution to GC pauses and allows other nice features like hot code reloading.

The majority of programming languages invented in the last 10 years don't seem that different from each other. I'd love to see a programming language that combines the strength of C++ and Erlang for soft realtime workloads.

jakevn• 9 years ago

You might find Pony interesting: https://www.ponylang.org/

BorkJames2• 9 years ago

At the same time you have to deal with waking up in the morning and telling yourself you're going to go do some pony today, which seems a tad off.

Im going to do some C++

Im going to do some Java

Im going to do some Pony

anthonybullard2• 9 years ago

If you are looking for a modern language with a pragmatic syntax and uses lightweight processes and message passing why not Elixir? It's an expressive, productive language that can leverage The power and scope of the Erlang/OTP ecosystem.

https://www.elixir-lang.com

acangiano• 9 years ago

Elixir is great but it most definitely doesn't fit the "C++ strengths" part of the requirements. Contrary to popular belief, Elixir is a slow language. Think Python/Ruby slow for compute-intensive tasks.

dom962• 9 years ago

There are many languages that do this. In addition to those already mentioned, there is also Nim. https://nim-lang.org

djur• 9 years ago

What support does Nim have for message passing? It looks to me like it has async/await and a thread pool-based version of something like pmap.

toast0• 9 years ago

A simple way to get isolated heaps and message passing is multiple os processes and local sockets; this can be more heavy weight than threads/green threads though.

I've done some experimentation with hot reloading in c lately, and I'm not sure how isolated heaps is a precondition for code reloading.

I suspect the requirement for erlang style code reloading is a willingness to take an indirection penalty for fully qualified module calls and tail call optimization so that the old module doesn't stay in process stacks. In an OOP language, if you wanted to tie objects to specific versions of modules, you'd have to do some intrusive accounting as well.

I also attempted hot code reloading in perl many years ago; it's a lot easier to do when you've seen it done properly, and there are language facilities for it (fdlopen is a lot nicer to use than exec on a pm). In my use cases (which were single threaded), I was able to write an outside loop that's simple enough that it's not a big deal that it can't be reloaded.

genzoman2• 9 years ago

Is there such a thing as vapor languages? I feel like crystal and elixir are vapor languages.

klez2• 9 years ago

Crystal, I don't know, but how is Elixir vapor?

genzoman2• 9 years ago

I honestly don't know a ton about it, but I see it mentioned in the same cool kid crowd of "rubyists" a lot.

RX144• 9 years ago

I'd hardly call a language with a fully-functioning compiler, a fairly complete standard library, which is being used in production in multiple (albeit small) companies as vaporware.

chrisseaton• 9 years ago

If you are wondering why people seem a bit offended by your comment, it's because calling something vapourware has an implication almost of dishonesty or a con.

Crystal is real software that you can use today and build yourself and modify. It's doesn't make sense to accuse it of being vapourware.

aisofteng• 9 years ago

I've always taken "vaporware" to refer to abandoned software.

rodorgas• 9 years ago

I notice they ask financial donations but not help with development. Since we are developers and not investors, we are much more capable of donating our time. What makes code contribution not useful (or irrelevant) in comparison to money in Crystal? It would increase “hours invested above donations”, but it's not a problem as their graph is trying to show.

mseebach• 9 years ago

Probably for "mythical man-month" related reasons. It's far from trivial to manage a large number of relatively small contributions from a large group of diverse developers.

RX144• 9 years ago

We gladly welcome contributions, please feel free to donate your time! However there are some tasks that are much easier to deliver and design as a small team, instead of being able to be broken up into small parts where work can be done by the community. We simply doubt someone is going to come along with the time and drive to complete rewriting the whole fiber scheduler and concurrency part of the stdlib as an external contribution.

That being said, Windows support is likely to be largely done by the community and core team in tandem, as individual modules can be ported one-by-one. There's also the overhead of managing all these open-source contributions which takes time.

deedubaya• 9 years ago

If nothing else, it's absolutely wonderful to see the Crystal team (RX14) acting on community feedback. Kudos!

RX144• 9 years ago

I didn't write this blog post, and it was actually mostly written before the previous HN thread. It's not all me!

exabrial• 9 years ago

I think Crystal is a brilliant language [non-intentional pun]. When I teach programming, I have found that dynamic languages are a little harder to explain. Been watching this for a number of years and I hope to see it explode!

lukeholder2• 9 years ago

Really loving Crystal, although not using it for any commercial applications (yet). It's really nice for building small command line apps. It has stolen my heart from Go TBH.

dilap• 9 years ago

as someone who loves Go, you've piqued my interest. tell us more?

lukeholder2• 9 years ago

Nicer syntax (Subjective).

Suuuuper fast! (Not that it matters but likely faster than Go[0]).

Single binary builds/deployments (Just like Go).

[0] http://blog.seraum.com/crystal-lang-vs-nodejs-vs-golang-vs-h...

marcalc• 9 years ago

I was really into golang too to the point I started doing some production work on it, but after I tried crystal, it became a little dull. Crystal is a great language and surely has a bright future for those who love ruby syntax.

sdogruyol• 9 years ago

Crystal production users: https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal/wiki/Used-in-product...

maxpert• 9 years ago

Please somebody write me a Ruby to Go transpiler :P

This is not a new year’s resolution

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