Feedback about a more regular spotlight/showcase of Crystal projects

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Hi guys!

The number of solid/production-ready projects built with Crystal is growing everyday. Setting aside the usual (constructive) criticisms, the language is increasingly being used for serious work, and I believe greater visibility will surely help more developers to discover it.

The idea: a more regular (monthly or bi-weekly) spotlight, mainly a blog article (and perhaps a short video interview on YouTube/X, remote or in-person like a podcast) showcasing projects that are either in production, well advanced, useful or simply funny/interesting.

(I know, you did it in the past, like with the LavinMQ’s one, but I believe we could increase the frequency and expand to more projects)

In the same initiative, we can also regularly bring core team members, as well as important contributors like:

  • Serdar from Kemal
  • George Dietrich from Athena
  • Szikszai and Sijawusz from Mint
  • Elias and Dru from Amber
  • Paul, Jeremy and Matthew from Lucky
  • Morgan and Marvin from Marten
  • and many others.

A semi-random example: look at termisu by Omar. The way he guides the project is genuinely fun, and the attention to detail (excellent docs, screenshots, overall developer experience) is impressive. I am genuinely curious to know how his experience with Crystal is. Don’t you either? :slight_smile:

We can expand the already long list of projects to bring to spotlight (from above) with: PlaceOS, Owasp Noir, Crecto, Foxtail, Invidious, YunoSynth/Benben, Croupier, Tourmaline, Mosquito, Pluto, Cable, Crystalline,

I frequently browse recently updated Crystal repos on GitHub (like this) and keep finding real gems.

What do you think? Other projects that you would like to add?

Note 1: Congratulations on the continuous improvements on Crystal performance. I didn’t expected it to be at that level of performance by surpassing Go and Nim. One special spotlight episode could be about LangArena and how amazingly good Crystal is performing in it. Thanks Kostya for the huge work on the benchmark!

Note 2: I would love to start such initiative myself and, although I have available time for it, my main challenge is economical/financial since I am recovering my small business after cancer treatment. I am open for possible calls with the Manas team, if desired.

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Hey @paulocoghi, thank you for the shoutout! That really means a lot.

I love this idea. Honestly, I sometimes find myself searching “Crystal” on YouTube just hoping to stumble on a random video about the language and learn something new, so more regular content like this would be fantastic.

As for my experience with Crystal, I really have no complaints. The language provides a wonderful out-of-the-box experience. The docs are nice and comprehensive, the paradigms make sense, and I’ve never had a “wait, why?” moment, which I honestly can’t say about every language I work with. It just clicks.

One project I’d add to the list: hace by @ralsina. You mentioned Croupier, but hace is a beautiful tool built on top of it worth spotlighting on its own.

I hope this initiative picks up momentum, it would be great for the community!

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3 posts were split to a new topic: hace shard

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2 posts were split to a new topic: Crystal in LangArena benchmark

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wow Termisu looks great, will be using it in future projects

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