ruby-packer VS crystal

Ruby Packer: distribute your Ruby code as a compiled binary\ (30 comments)

One way around this limitation is to also include a ruby interpreter along with your source code. There are some projects out there that attempt to do just that, each with their own limitations and degrees of success. One such project is https://github.com/pmq20/ruby-packer. With this, you can give it your ruby code and it will bundle it up with a ruby interpreter so that you can hand out a single executable file to run.

Go has been used at Flipp for some time now, although not widely in my team. I wanted to use Go to create a command-line executable, something that Ruby unfortunately isn't capable of doing. (There are options, such as ruby-packer, but it seems like a "heavy" solution and doesn't seem to fit the Ruby paradigm.)

27. Crystal - $77,104

I like the first code example on https://crystal-lang.org

    # A very basic HTTP server

Obviously as an interpreted language, it's never going to be as fast as something like C, Rust, or Go. Traditionally the ruby maintainers have not designed or optimized for pure speed, but that is changing, and the language is definitely faster these days compared to a decade ago.

If you like the ruby syntax/language but want the speed of a compiled language, it's also worth checking out Crystal[^1]. It's mostly ruby-like in syntax, style, and developer ergonomics.[^2] Although it's an entirely different language. Also a tiny community.

[1]: https://crystal-lang.org/

Crystal is a nice language that's not only simple to read and write but performs very well too. And the documentation is amazing as well.

Ruby is a super fun scripting language. I much prefer it to python when I need something with a little more "ooomph" than bash. It's just...nice...to write in. Ruby performance has come a long way in the last decade as well. There's libraries for pretty much everything.

My modern programming toolkit is basically golang + ruby + bash and I am never left wanting.

I do find Crystal (https://crystal-lang.org/) really interesting and am hoping it has its own "ruby on rails" moment that helps the language reach a tipping point in popularity. All the beauty of ruby with all of the speed of Go (and then some, it often compares favorably to languages like rust in benchmarks).