Crystal vs Swift

Overview

Swift

Stacks21.9K

Followers13.6K

Votes1.3K

Crystal

Stacks341

Followers350

Votes286

GitHub Stars20.0K

Forks1.7K

Crystal vs Swift: What are the differences?

Syntax: One key difference between Crystal and Swift lies in their syntax. Crystal follows a more Ruby-like syntax, making it quite readable and elegant, while Swift has a syntax that is more C-like, offering familiarity to those already accustomed to languages like C, C++, and Objective-C.
Concurrency: Another significant difference is in how the two languages handle concurrency. Crystal provides built-in support for lightweight fibers, making it easier to write asynchronous code. On the other hand, Swift relies on Grand Central Dispatch and other concurrency patterns, providing a different approach to handling concurrent tasks.
Static vs Dynamic Typing: Crystal is a statically typed language, meaning that all variables and expressions must have a specified type known at compile time. Swift, on the other hand, supports both static and dynamic typing, giving developers more flexibility in their code.
Memory Management: In terms of memory management, Crystal utilizes automatic memory management through its garbage collection system, while Swift uses Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) to manage memory for objects.
Community and Ecosystem: The community and ecosystem surrounding these languages also differ significantly. Swift has a large and active community due to its use in developing iOS and macOS applications, while Crystal has a smaller community but is rapidly growing in popularity for web development.
Compilation: Crystal is a compiled language, which means that the code is translated directly into machine code before being executed. On the other hand, Swift uses both ahead-of-time (AOT) and just-in-time (JIT) compilation, allowing for a balance between performance and flexibility in execution.

In Summary, Crystal and Swift differ in syntax, concurrency handling, typing systems, memory management, community size, and compilation methods.

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Advice on Swift, Crystal

vargamatyas

Nov 22, 2020

Needs adviceon

Python

Swift

React Native

Hey guys, I learned the basics (OOP, data structures & some algorithms) with Python, but now I want to learn iOS development. I am considering to learn Swift, but I am afraid how the native mobile development will die out because of the cross-platform frameworks and reviews. My idea is to learn web development first and then learn React Native, and after all of that, finally Swift. What do you think about this roadmap? Should I just learn Swift first due to the pros of the native apps?

126k views126k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Swift	Crystal
Writing code is interactive and fun, the syntax is concise yet expressive, and apps run lightning-fast. Swift is ready for your next iOS and OS X project — or for addition into your current app — because Swift code works side-by-side with Objective-C.	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 -	GitHub Stars 20.0K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 1.7K
Stacks 21.9K	Stacks 341
Followers 13.6K	Followers 350
Votes 1.3K	Votes 286
Pros & Cons
Pros 259 Ios 180 Elegant 126 Not Objective-C 107 Backed by apple 93 Type inference Cons 6 Must own a mac 2 Memory leaks are not uncommon 1 Its classes compile to roughly 300 lines of assembly 1 Very irritatingly picky about things that’s 1 Complicated process for exporting modules	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
Integrations
Cocoa Touch (iOS)	No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Swift, Crystal?

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 Swift: What are the differences?

Syntax: One key difference between Crystal and Swift lies in their syntax. Crystal follows a more Ruby-like syntax, making it quite readable and elegant, while Swift has a syntax that is more C-like, offering familiarity to those already accustomed to languages like C, C++, and Objective-C.
Concurrency: Another significant difference is in how the two languages handle concurrency. Crystal provides built-in support for lightweight fibers, making it easier to write asynchronous code. On the other hand, Swift relies on Grand Central Dispatch and other concurrency patterns, providing a different approach to handling concurrent tasks.
Static vs Dynamic Typing: Crystal is a statically typed language, meaning that all variables and expressions must have a specified type known at compile time. Swift, on the other hand, supports both static and dynamic typing, giving developers more flexibility in their code.
Memory Management: In terms of memory management, Crystal utilizes automatic memory management through its garbage collection system, while Swift uses Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) to manage memory for objects.
Community and Ecosystem: The community and ecosystem surrounding these languages also differ significantly. Swift has a large and active community due to its use in developing iOS and macOS applications, while Crystal has a smaller community but is rapidly growing in popularity for web development.
Compilation: Crystal is a compiled language, which means that the code is translated directly into machine code before being executed. On the other hand, Swift uses both ahead-of-time (AOT) and just-in-time (JIT) compilation, allowing for a balance between performance and flexibility in execution.

In Summary, Crystal and Swift differ in syntax, concurrency handling, typing systems, memory management, community size, and compilation methods.

Crystal vs Swift

Overview