Its designers claim that it is as quick as C and as easy to read as Ruby.
The mind is expanded in ways you never imagined when one learns a new programming language. Like learning a human language like Spanish or Mandarin, you adapt your way of thinking to incorporate new vocabulary and syntactical structures.
You gain insight into the speakers’ worldviews by learning about their communities and cultures. To put it mildly, it’s eye-opening.
What’s cool about learning a new programming language is that it’s always the most difficult one to pick up at the start. If you know how if-statements and for-loops work, you’ll be able to apply that knowledge to a wide variety of languages.
And new programming languages can be learned at a much faster rate than human languages. Fewer words are used, and the instructions are clearer and simpler.
As this is the case, it stands to reason that most programmers and data scientists are fluent in multiple languages.
They might favor one over the other. If you include scripting languages, however, I know that most software professionals utilize at least five languages on a weekly basis.
Most programmers also dabble with language learning.
This is simply part of the job. Curiosity is essential for programmers.
Justification for Crystal:
According to its marketing, Crystal is a language with the speed of C and the elegance of Ruby.
The smoothness described is accurate. There are benefits and drawbacks to the way it is compiled and statically typed. More than anything else, though, its design is strikingly similar to Ruby’s.
To be honest, I have never used Ruby for anything more substantial than a small program. And yet, even to me, a reasonably seasoned Python developer, the Crystal code still looks as obvious as day.
An illustration of a factorial-calculating recursive loop:
Those unfamiliar with Ruby may be confused by the put command. It’s the equivalent of terrible taste in foreign language print. We won’t go into the nitty-gritty of the differences between puts and print at this time.
Beyond that, though, this sample appears to be fairly pythonic, right?
For if-clauses, it’s the same thing:
This is again fairly legible, with the exception of the humorous puts expression that is unfamiliar to non-natives of the Ruby language.
Crystal’s syntax is often straightforward, even when solving more involved issues.
Typing in a static format:
Although Crystal is statically typed, it is possible that you have noticed a lack of type identifiers in the preceding examples. That’s because if a variable’s type is uncertain, only then will Crystal ask you to specify it.
Naturally, this method aids developers in getting more done in less time.
Macros:
The use of macros is often problematic in statically typed languages. On the other hand, Crystal is able to talk to them.
Crystal macros allow you to make changes to your code at compile time using static reasoning based on the contents of other parts of your code, as demonstrated here. If you attempt this in C++, you will inevitably run into problems or end up writing over 500 lines of code.
Do you, your brilliant mind, not? Please correct me if I’m wrong…
As the adage goes, though, “with great power comes great responsibility,” thus there are certain restrictions here. Insanely powerful items (like the ones Crystal permits) somewhat undermine the protective effects of static type.
Negligible or no mistakes:
Regarding security, Crystal does have some extra measures in place. Nil is a different type for the Crystal compiler. So if you’re trying to access a method or container that turns out to be nil, the compiler will notify you. This might result in a failure of compilation, but at least you get to repair the issue before you run a possibly big code.
The end of hellish dependence:
Dependency hell is familiar territory for anyone who has tackled a sizable Python problem.
It’s possible that a single Python module depends on several others, and only after you’ve imported them all will you discover that their versions are incompatible. If your project is particularly large, figuring out which versions to utilize to make everything work together can take several hours.
Shards are Crystal’s term for these add-on modules, which are statically linked into your binary executable during compilation. To keep this brief (I could go into detail), This method makes dependency management a breeze.
The major problem is that the crystal is quite diminutive:
In 2017, Crystal experienced a period when it rose from position 60 to position 32 on the TIOBE index in the span of a single month. It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what sparked Crystal’s spectacular rise, although its developers’ extensive marketing definitely had a role.
Crystal’s stardom, however, didn’t remain at its peak for long. As of this writing, Crystal is ranked quite low on the TIOBE index of popular programming languages.
Its early success led some to predict it would eventually surpass Rust in popularity.
Nothing of the sort has happened.
Developers have complained that they are not given enough guidance or feedback on sample projects and code bases. There is also a sense that the documentation is missing some key details. This discouraged a lot of would-be programmers.
Because of how small the Crystal community is, if you need support you may have to wait a while. The number of helpful responses on question-and-answer sites like StackOverflow and GitHub is rather low.
Another issue is that Crystal’s speed isn’t as advertised:
- The developers behind Crystal aimed to make it just as fast as C.
- Maybe this holds water in special circumstances. Crystal, on the other hand, typically requires twice as much time to run as C.
- It’s typical for programming languages (and, by extension, tech businesses) to have lofty goals. To be fair, though, even half as fast as C is still fairly fast.
- Crystal, however, falls far short of its advertising. I can’t say that I blame the typical programmer for being dissatisfied, because the flaw is so clear.
- Iconic dying words: You must be an expert programmer to use Crystal.
Learning new languages is one of my favorite things to do, although my preference is for languages that have good documentation and a large, helpful community. This is a sentiment shared by many in the programming community. - For the past few years, Crystal has attempted to break into the mainstream, but it has largely failed.
- But it doesn’t imply there aren’t any cool applications for Crystal. It could be a viable choice for those involved in blockchain development. Crystal can be used to generate a coin with some serious firepower.
- But, Crystal won’t be a fantastic alternative for the ordinary blockchain developer until the documentation, marketing, and community support improve.
- You’d better know what you’re doing if you want to experiment with a serious language like Crystal. For the simple reason that you may find yourself alone in a time of need.