[bb1234]

I used Crystal to create a web application a 2-3 years ago. It is running great without any problems. There are not that many users (only about 300-400) at any time. Anyhow, I did not touch the application in the last two years, and did not use Crystal in the last two years for anything else. I used Rust to write some simple personal CLI apps, which was fun but also hard. For some reason, couple of days back I returned to Crystal for a CLI app that I am making. I will say this: Crystal is a lot of fun to program in, easy to use and performant all at the same time. I cannot explain the reasons objectively, but it is really a joy to use Crystal. I think I will be using it from now on. I just wish it had a bigger community and as a result more libraries.

[axelthegerman]

Probably because of the Ruby inspired syntax which just brings joy. Hopefully the ecosystem can grow and partially catch up as well

[jjtheblunt]

i've seen that said so many times, and fail to understand why Ruby syntax brings joy.

Personally, I thought the muddled Proc, block, and lambda situation a mess, coming from Scheme 30 years ago to Ruby 20 years ago.

[jrumbut]

Well it would seem very messy coming from Scheme!

Scheme is a small language which achieves expressiveness by allowing you great freedom to push the language into bold new forms.

Ruby (especially with Rails which should almost be considered a separate language) is a big language where simplicity is maintained by informal convention.

Ruby has lots of muddles and messy features, good Ruby code bypasses them.

[threatofrain]

Ruby was among the first languages I learned, back when there was the possibility of Ruby being a general purpose language and not just Rails. My joy was the result of being able to guess syntax and be right. Nowadays I value reading documentation and IDE level support, so guessing syntax is no longer a joy.

[zelphirkalt]

When I saw it, I felt the same way (also using Scheme a lot) and I still feel it is messy. However, what I think might be the reason for it, is that it is difficult to store a lambda in Scheme including its whole environment in an object and send that over the wire somewhere else, on a different machine to run. Perhaps distinguishing between Proc, block and lambda gives Ruby a possibility to treat one of them specially, so that it can do these things easily?

[straight-shoota]

I can gladly point out that Crystal has a much cleaned up syntax for blocks and procs (compared to Ruby): https://crystal-lang.org/reference/1.5/syntax_and_semantics/...

[nurettin]

> Personally, I thought the muddled Proc, block, and lambda situation a mess

Why not use one (probably just block) for everything? Coming from ruby 10 years ago.

[xigoi]

Blocks can't be stored in variables.

[nurettin]

Yes, I don't store them in variables, but I can expand them in generators and yield them. To me, that is much more useful than storing them.

[gsinclair]

I guess those things are a compromise. Being able to use that concept easily is a joy. The implementation prioritises developer convenience over syntactic purity. It’s a shame we can’t have both, but I accept the trade-off.

[werdnapk]

That's quite a minor nitpick on an entire language that's been around for over 25 years.

[ed25519FUUU]

I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder because I look at that syntax and cringe.

[pell]

What about it makes you cringe?

[ed25519FUUU]

This kind of thing

            End
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[lgreiv]

While it is not completely impossible to end up (pun intended) with something like this, you usually follow a coding style that avoids it. Kind of like in Ruby.

You have the option to define named methods that yield or to use the short one-parameter syntax where this:

  method do |param|
    param.some_method
  end

becomes

  method &.some_method

[tromp]

I get no joy from Ruby syntax. Haskell syntax on the other hand I love...

[piyushpr134]

Same argument that I keep on having with people who like 1. gray and darker gray buildings of a tree-less megacity beautiful, with a dash of color vs 2. those who find small cities/villages mixed with art, trees & colourfully dressed people beautiful.