Glad you found that worthwhile to bring up but not extrapolate on :)
> specifically did evaluate Crystal some time ago, having a set of properties that seemed to hit a sweet spot. I gave it a fair go working on several projects with some of the popular Crystal web frameworks. I went in with full enthusiasm. In the end, only the most basic framework, Kemal (Lightning Fast, Super Simple web framework. Inspired by Sinatra) was tolerable. Definitely not a Rails/Ruby replacement. After that, I favored Phoenix/Elixir for such projects.
Great! Glad you found something that worked out for you! I'm noticing you didn't bring up compilation time in your complaints about Crystal specifically, which seems like a worthwhile thing to point out given we're discussing Crystal compilation times.
Regardless, in the spirit of my other recent post, I'm glad you found a tool/language that you enjoy (Phoenix/Elixir)!
I have nothing against Crystal. In fact I still think it's great, just not for the kinds of things (e.g. web dev) that I would do in languages like Ruby, Go, or Java. Similarly, Pony is a fantastic language (Rust done right IMO) but I don't have a use for what it/Rust delivers in my typical projects. In short, I think Crystal could benefit from better/clearer positioning, as the digressing discussions in these comments show.
I specifically did evaluate Crystal some time ago, having a set of properties that seemed to hit a sweet spot. I gave it a fair go working on several projects with some of the popular Crystal web frameworks. I went in with full enthusiasm. In the end, only the most basic framework, Kemal (Lightning Fast, Super Simple web framework. Inspired by Sinatra) was tolerable. Definitely not a Rails/Ruby replacement. After that, I favored Phoenix/Elixir for such projects.