Crystal vs Kotlin

Overview

Crystal

Stacks341

Followers350

Votes286

GitHub Stars20.0K

Forks1.7K

Kotlin

Stacks17.7K

Followers11.9K

Votes650

GitHub Stars51.5K

Forks6.1K

Crystal vs Kotlin: What are the differences?

Performance: Crystal is known for its high performance due to its static typing and compiled nature, whereas Kotlin, although being more performant than languages like Java, may not match the performance levels of Crystal.
Concurrency: Kotlin has strong support for asynchronous programming and coroutines, making it easier to write concurrent code, while Crystal also has support for concurrency but is more focused on synchronous programming.
Interoperability: Kotlin is built to seamlessly interoperate with Java, allowing developers to leverage existing Java libraries and frameworks, whereas Crystal has limited interoperability with other languages and platforms.
Syntax: Crystal has a Ruby-like syntax that is easy to read and write, making it appealing to Ruby developers, while Kotlin has a more Java-like syntax that may be more familiar to developers coming from a Java background.
Community and Ecosystem: Kotlin has a larger community and ecosystem due to its backing by JetBrains and Google, which results in better tooling, documentation, and support compared to Crystal, which has a smaller community and ecosystem.
Compilation: Crystal compiles down to native machine code, resulting in fast and efficient executables, whereas Kotlin compiles to Java bytecode, which requires the Java Virtual Machine to run.

In Summary, Crystal and Kotlin differ in terms of performance, concurrency support, interoperability, syntax, community, and compilation targets.

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Advice on Crystal, Kotlin

Nick

Building cool things on the internet 🛠️ at Stream

Sep 5, 2019

Review

I work at Stream and I'm immensely proud of what our team is working on here at the company. Most recently, we announced our Android SDK accompanied by an extensive tutorial for Java and Kotlin. The tutorial covers just about everything you need to know when it comes to using our Android SDK for Stream Chat. The Android SDK touches many features offered by Stream Chat – more specifically, typing status, read state, file uploads, threads, reactions, editing messages, and commands. Head over to https://getstream.io/tutorials/android-chat/ and give it a whirl!

176k views176k

Comments

Zuriel

Jun 7, 2020

Needs advice

Can anyone help me decide what's best for app development or even android Oreo development? I'm in a state dilemma at the moment. I want to do Android programming, not necessarily web development. I have heard a lot of people recommend one of these, and it seems that both the tools can do the job. Which language would you choose?

291k views291k

Comments

Liviu Florin

Principal Software Engineer at Dell Technologies

Dec 11, 2020

Review

Hi, Well...It depends. Take this with a grain of salt as I'm not a mobile app developer. I would weigh in some factors. If I would want to go fast, maybe I would make an Android app and use the language that I know, Java or even Kotlin. It really depends on how much time do you have. Alternatives to Flutter you can find here: https://buildfire.com/programming-languages-for-mobile-app-development/. As you already went with Firebase it might be a good option to stick with Flutter as they are both Google products and their integration might work more smoothly.
I would also take into account the job market in your area and your personal preference in order to raise your chances to find a good job after you graduate and use your project as actual work experience. I guess it would help to put in some specs related to what you are trying to build, as some frameworks are better suited to do one job, rather than others and hopefully get more specific answers.

1.14k views1.14k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Crystal	Kotlin
Crystal is a programming language that resembles Ruby but compiles to native code and tries to be much more efficient, at the cost of disallowing certain dynamic aspects of Ruby.	Kotlin is a statically typed programming language for the JVM, Android and the browser, 100% interoperable with Java
Ruby-inspired syntax.;Statically type-checked but without having to specify the type of variables or method arguments.;Be able to call C code by writing bindings to it in Crystal.;Have compile-time evaluation and generation of code, to avoid boilerplate code.;Compile to efficient native code.	-
Statistics
GitHub Stars 20.0K	GitHub Stars 51.5K
GitHub Forks 1.7K	GitHub Forks 6.1K
Stacks 341	Stacks 17.7K
Followers 350	Followers 11.9K
Votes 286	Votes 650
Pros & Cons
Pros 38 Compiles to efficient native code 36 Ruby inspired syntax 32 Performance oriented - C-like speeds 23 Gem-like packages, called Shards 20 Can call C code using Crystal bindings Cons 13 Small community 3 No windows support 1 No Oracle lib	Pros 73 Interoperable with Java 55 Functional Programming support 51 Null Safety 46 Official Android support 44 Backed by JetBrains Cons 7 Java interop makes users write Java in Kotlin 4 Frequent use of {} keys 2 Hard to make teams adopt the Kotlin style 2 Nonullpointer Exception 1 Slow compiler

What are some alternatives to Crystal, Kotlin?

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Java

Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

Scala

Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.

Elixir

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.

Related Comparisons

Crystal vs Kotlin: What are the differences?

Performance: Crystal is known for its high performance due to its static typing and compiled nature, whereas Kotlin, although being more performant than languages like Java, may not match the performance levels of Crystal.
Concurrency: Kotlin has strong support for asynchronous programming and coroutines, making it easier to write concurrent code, while Crystal also has support for concurrency but is more focused on synchronous programming.
Interoperability: Kotlin is built to seamlessly interoperate with Java, allowing developers to leverage existing Java libraries and frameworks, whereas Crystal has limited interoperability with other languages and platforms.
Syntax: Crystal has a Ruby-like syntax that is easy to read and write, making it appealing to Ruby developers, while Kotlin has a more Java-like syntax that may be more familiar to developers coming from a Java background.
Community and Ecosystem: Kotlin has a larger community and ecosystem due to its backing by JetBrains and Google, which results in better tooling, documentation, and support compared to Crystal, which has a smaller community and ecosystem.
Compilation: Crystal compiles down to native machine code, resulting in fast and efficient executables, whereas Kotlin compiles to Java bytecode, which requires the Java Virtual Machine to run.

In Summary, Crystal and Kotlin differ in terms of performance, concurrency support, interoperability, syntax, community, and compilation targets.

Crystal vs Kotlin

Overview