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  1. Stackups
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  5. Crystal vs Lua

Crystal vs Lua

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Lua
Lua
Stacks2.5K
Followers1.0K
Votes180
GitHub Stars1.5K
Forks452
Crystal
Crystal
Stacks341
Followers350
Votes286
GitHub Stars20.0K
Forks1.7K

Crystal vs Lua: What are the differences?

Developers describe Crystal as "Fast as C, slick as Ruby". 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. On the other hand, Lua is detailed as "Powerful, fast, lightweight, embeddable scripting language". Lua combines simple procedural syntax with powerful data description constructs based on associative arrays and extensible semantics. Lua is dynamically typed, runs by interpreting bytecode for a register-based virtual machine, and has automatic memory management with incremental garbage collection, making it ideal for configuration, scripting, and rapid prototyping.

Crystal and Lua can be primarily classified as "Languages" tools.

"Compiles to efficient native code" is the top reason why over 27 developers like Crystal, while over 19 developers mention "Fast learning curve" as the leading cause for choosing Lua.

Crystal and Lua are both open source tools. It seems that Crystal with 13.4K GitHub stars and 1.05K forks on GitHub has more adoption than Lua with 1.26K GitHub stars and 437 GitHub forks.

Shopify, Close, and Thumbtack are some of the popular companies that use Lua, whereas Crystal is used by Bitupper, Diploid, and mose. Lua has a broader approval, being mentioned in 55 company stacks & 22 developers stacks; compared to Crystal, which is listed in 7 company stacks and 14 developer stacks.

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Advice on Lua, Crystal

Gamerians
Gamerians

May 21, 2020

Needs adviceonLuaLuaPythonPythonJavaJava

I am trying to make Roblox game which requires Lua. I quite don't want to go with Lua just because other tools just might let me do more projects later on. I heard that Python is most similar to Lua, but I am still not sure which tool to use. Java, I think it will help me with many stuff later on for websites, projects, and more!

470k views470k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Lua
Lua
Crystal
Crystal

Lua combines simple procedural syntax with powerful data description constructs based on associative arrays and extensible semantics. Lua is dynamically typed, runs by interpreting bytecode for a register-based virtual machine, and has automatic memory management with incremental garbage collection, making it ideal for configuration, scripting, and rapid prototyping.

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.

-
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
1.5K
GitHub Stars
20.0K
GitHub Forks
452
GitHub Forks
1.7K
Stacks
2.5K
Stacks
341
Followers
1.0K
Followers
350
Votes
180
Votes
286
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 41
    Fast learning curve
  • 26
    Efficient memory usage
  • 26
    Very easy to embed in C programs
  • 20
    Open source
  • 19
    Good for game scripting
Cons
  • 4
    Nooby
  • 2
    Not widespread
  • 1
    D
  • 0
    Python
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

What are some alternatives to Lua, Crystal?

JavaScript

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

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

PHP

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

Ruby

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

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

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

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#

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

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

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.

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