FOSSMeet 2018

Crystal is a new kid in the block. The language was developed in admiration for Ruby (known for being the most friendlies programming language) and respect for the performance provided by the static compiled languages. The final output of this fun project became something that the world was missing. A language as slick as Ruby, but as fast as C.

Crystal is an LLVM based language which has ruby like syntax. Crystal is not trying to be compatible with ruby hence they include more features that can be efficiently provided by a static compiler. Crystal has a relatively small learning curve, due its relationship with Ruby, and its an ideal tool of choice for those who want to build command line application, network application, web application (with a really low memory footprint), background workers, etc

The project is still officially mentioned to be in alpha stage but the is being used by many companies in Production (Which includes Red Panthers, from Kochi, India). I have also contributed to the core library of crystal.

Outline

The topics I wish to cover:

1. About Crystal
2. What makes it so simple
3. Things to note while moving to a static language from a dynamic language
4. Stable and popular libraries the language offers (like web framework, ORM, CLI builders, etc)
5. How to get started on contributing to a crystal library
6. How we are using it in Production
7. What I belive as a programmer could be the future of this language

Requirements

There are not requirements for attending the session, but if they are interested they can have cyrstal installed in their system (https://crystal-lang.org) and follow along.

Speaker bio

Harisankar P S

I am a Ruby on Rails developer for the past 6 years, open source contributor and international conference speakers. I am also the CEO and Founder of Red Panthers. I organize Kerala Ruby User Group activities such as reuglar meetups, workshops and open source saturdays.

I love learning and un-learning concepts in technology and life.