Re:Lilith: x86-64 OS written in Crystal
by lmm on Sunday December 22, 2019 @11:43PM
(#21861523)
Is it really so hard to port Ruby code to any of the languages I mentioned? Even with Crystal you will still have to make changes to your code, is having to use a slightly different syntax such a big difference? If you've got Ruby code and you haven't already ported it, how badly do you need the speed?
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Re:Lilith: x86-64 OS written in Crystal
by EamonnMR on Monday December 23, 2019 @07:51AM
(#21863291)
Mentally context switching between Ruby and any other language to do the translation actually is kind of a hassle.
I could imagine, that the subtle differences could get you ugly problems while porting.
Won't the differences be more subtle and difficult if you use a language that's syntactically Ruby-like but not actually Ruby?
Well it seems most developers here would rather use Ruby + several memory-optimised VM clusters to make their services go faster and destroy their balance sheet than to use a faster language that is efficient in memory and is also blazing fast.
A rewrite in (other fast language) from Ruby sounds ridiculous as soon as you include writing a extra FFI wrapper around this you have to maintain so that would be out of the picture and that sounds a lot harder than a semi 1:1 port of the source code.
The trouble is Ruby itself is starting to become a sunken cost as a language but is survived because of Rails, thus also explains the countless memory issues that happen when developers use it. So for a stopgap to something sort of better, I would rather port to Crystal or Elixir so I can run on those low-cost VMs and save cash.