What kind of targets is crystal used on? Strictly x86_64 linux?

EDIT: Took a little digging but I found it [1] (and yes it's primarily x86_64 linux+macOS)

[1] https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal/wiki/Platform-Suppor...

Windows will probably be done in a year, but it's hard to say. Hardest part is finding people who want to work on windows support xD

No kidding. (I wasn't complaining btw nor was I even focused on OS support, I was curious about which arches people use it on).

What are the popular use cases - either ones driving current development or ones where it's best suited?

Right now people mainly use it for web apps, sometimes data processing. With windows support, I think there would be a rush to make cross platform GUI apps.

I'm going to have a hard time convincing my team to adopt a completely new language :)

Is there a specific reason why you chose shainet/crystal?

I love crystal and I have a lot of autonomy so I get to use what I want. Shainet is also really good in general for coming up with new network topologies, which I find is a lot harder to do in a lot of the python-based mega-frameworks, Cafe, etc. In general, fibers are really good for concurrent/parallel data processing, and now that crystal has true parallelism (enabled with a flag), for my purposes there is no reason not to use it.

Occasionally I will use rust or C/C++ for some of these tasks, but I try to keep things in crystal whenever I can.