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Crystal vs C#: 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, C# is detailed as "Simple, general-purpose, object-oriented programming language for the .NET platform". 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.

Crystal and C# can be primarily classified as "Languages" tools.

"Compiles to efficient native code" is the primary reason why developers consider Crystal over the competitors, whereas "Cool syntax" was stated as the key factor in picking C#.

Crystal is an open source tool with 13.5K GitHub stars and 1.05K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Crystal's open source repository on GitHub.

Stack Exchange, Microsoft, and Intuit are some of the popular companies that use C#, whereas Crystal is used by Bitupper, Diploid, and mose. C# has a broader approval, being mentioned in 697 company stacks & 1163 developers stacks; compared to Crystal, which is listed in 7 company stacks and 14 developer stacks.

Advice on C# and Crystal
Needs advice
on
C#C#F#F#
and
KotlinKotlin

Hi there. I want to expand my coding toolset. So I want to learn a second backend language besides Kotlin. Kotlin is fantastic. I love it in every aspect, and I think I can never return to Java. And also why should I? It is 100% interoperable with java and can co-exist in every project.

So my question here is. Which language do you think will bring me more joy? I think F#; it is more like Kotlin. Then C# (it's more or like 100% java). But, let's say I learn F#. Is it 100% interoperable like Kotlin? can they live side by side? Can I, then, apply to .NET jr jobs after a while, for example, or is C# the holy cow? I would like to learn .Net.

If it is the worst and only C# is acceptable, then which language should I learn? Dart? Go?

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Replies (3)
Recommends
on
C#C#KotlinKotlin

Exceptional decision to go with Kotlin. For the other story, go full with C#. "is C# the holy cow? Yes it is.". Specially now when netCore is crossplatform and you can build asp.net core applications on Windows, Linux and macOS via Visual Studio Code which is also multiplatform. Nothing will beat C# in the near future. Also, at the end of 2021 Microsoft will release Net 6.0 which will include MAUI.

"For those new to .NET MAUI (standing for .NET Multi-platform App UI), Microsoft says it's "the evolution of Xamarin.Forms extended from mobile to desktop scenarios with UI controls rebuilt from the ground up for performance and extensibility."

So, C# all the way sire!

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Recommends
on
C#C#

animefanx1,

First let's get your questions sorted: Which language do you think will bring me more joy?

This you will have to decide for yourself, I am a long time C# developer and have seen it grow into a very compelling platform. The language and I'd compare it more to Kotlin than Java (by a long margin). More on .NET in a bit.

say I learn F#. Is it 100% interoperable like Kotlin?

You can have 100% interop with a caveat, your F# libraries have to implement certain guidance in order to be referenced from C#. Some (dare I say most) of the differences between F# and C# are predicated on language constructs that are not available in C#. For instance F# functions that return Unit.

can they live side by side?

Yes.

Can I, then, apply to .NET jr jobs after a while, for example, or is C# the holy cow?

I don't know if I take your meaning, but let me say this: Learning either C# or F# will likely force you to understand concepts such as garbage collection, primitive types, etc. which apply to all .NET languages, thus a lot of the effort you put into .NET is bound to pay off regardless of your choice.

If it is the worst and only C# is acceptable, then which language should I learn? Dart? Go? You can't go wrong with any of these and I venture to say whether you select C#, F#, Dart or Go as your next adventure, your willingness to learn will take you to try other languages, some which mey not even exist yet!

PS1: .NET is an end to end environment now. With the introduction of Blazor and Razor pages one does not need JavaScript or other browser scripting languages, it even interops with JavaScript. PS2. Microsoft is working on unifying .NET. Soon there will be only one version: .NET 5! Caveat: Some features such as WinForms will still be specific to the windows environment but all of those are likely things you don't need in Mac or Linux

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Recommends
on
GolangGolang

I think you can learn go instead C#. C# is cool, but Golang also cool. It can run on any OS without specific software. C# can run on linux too but it's only the .NET Core as I know. But golang is flexible. So try it and decide what do you think about Golang

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Needs advice
on
C#C#JavaScriptJavaScript
and
ReactReact

Hi Everyone,

I have some experience working with JavaScript and React and will now try to learn C# - could you please share some similarities and differences between JS and C# and what rookie mistakes I should watch out for when learning C#?

Also, any tips & good practices are greatly appreciated :)

Thank you

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Replies (4)
Pavel Kalugin
Software Engineer at Paralect · | 9 upvotes · 194.6K views

If you want to learn C# to write some backend code you can also check out Node.js which is basically JavaScript running outside the browser. You can create any kind of web servers, APIs, scrapers, automation scripts, etc using all the same JavaScript.

A good entry to Node is Express.js. It is the most common web framework for Node. It's well documented and there are a lot of educational materials for it.

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Hameed Moshood
Recommends
on
C#C#

C# is .net framework of a programming language specially different from the programming languages you're used to. If you learn C# you will be experienceed in coding with VIsual Basic .net and also creating web development using ASP and this ASP also include JavaScript function.... I urge you to learn it

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Kudos Beluga
Recommends
on
F#F#Node.jsNode.js

I prefer functional programming because it produces less buggy code (thus I recommend F#), and is simply better to learn this paradigm earlier on in your coding career rather than later. It can also do most stuff C# can do, namely code with .NET core. If you're going to learn .NET then you should learn Node.js+Express first though before doing web development with C#/F#

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Ross M.
System Architect at MomentFactory · | 2 upvotes · 177.9K views
Recommends
on
C#C#JavaScriptJavaScript

I think you can manage to find something about this topic. it's pretty popular one. ex: https://www.educba.com/c-sharp-vs-js/

Something I don't see discussed enough over the internet is the performance difference. I don't think you should worry about this. 95% of the time you won't notice the difference on your day to day projets. You will know what you need in terms of performance when you get there.

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Needs advice
on
C#C#DjangoDjango
and
PythonPython

Hi all, I have been working on the development and automation of construction software using C# and Python. Recently I have started working on Django python web framework and basic frontend for web development. I am really confused to choose between C# and Python to move forward in my career. Seeking your advice on these technologies and their future market value from a career perspective. Thanks,

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Replies (3)
ALESSIO SALTARIN
Distinguished IT Architect at IBM · | 10 upvotes · 202.8K views
Recommends
on
C#C#DjangoDjangoPythonPython

In my opinion, a modern developer should have deep knowledge about Object Oriented (OOP) and Functional Programming (FP). The programming language is something that must come later. Any good programmer should be able to switch from one programming language to another easily, if they follow OOP and FP. There are languages, though, that must absolutely be in the portfolio of a modern developer: Java, C#, Python and JavaScript. But be prepared to know also Scala, Kotlin, Swift, Go, Ruby, Rust and TypeScript.

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Carlos Iglesias
Recommends

C# and Python are both great languages. With great communities, libraries, frameworks, opportunities. I think it will be the same in a near future.

It’s matter of your likes, and your next jobs.

Dot net core is a little faster on performance. Python more popular with dynamic types. Probably the most lovable language.

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Recommends
on
DjangoDjango

It depends on your preferred career path, if you want to work in start-up/scale-up environments, you probably want to go with a language like Django for the rapid development (fast to production). On the other hand, C# or Java would be better for building long term and large scaled applications, although, Django could certainly achieve this as well. I also want to second that it won't hurt to know both languages, pick your technologies wisely according to the use case, don't stick to a single technology stack. :)

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Needs advice
on
C#C#
and
GolangGolang

I need some advice to choose a language for back-end development. Right now, my REST APIs were created by using Flask/Django, and I'd like to create a more reliable and more efficient API with static typing. On the one hand, Go is young, very light, and syntax like Python's, but C# has a large number of libs and more built-in methods. Which is the best solution today?

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Replies (10)
Bruno Miguel
Recommends
on
C#C#GolangGolang

It depends.

From times to times I asked or was asked that same question. Technology aside, it's important to consider the skills and expertise that the dev team has. Whether you use language A,B or C or framework X,Y and Z, if your team has a strong background and experience with something make it count too.

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Recommends
on
GolangGolang
at

I would recommend Go simply because as you mentioned, it's super light. No need to bring in the whole .NET suite to get a simple REST API up and running. Even if your API is a bit complex, Go should be able to handle it.

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Bob Bass
President & Full Stack Enginee at Narro, LLC · | 5 upvotes · 262.2K views
Recommends
on
Node.jsNode.jsTypeScriptTypeScript

I started out with C# and .NET and I loved it. In my opinion, it was the perfect way to start learning the fundamentals of software development however I always felt like I was at a disadvantage when I was doing .NET development. Granted, .NET Core is now open-source and cross-platform, but I moved to Node.js simply because it is incredibly popular. I never thought I'd learn to love JavaScript it the way I did with C#, but I learned to love it pretty quickly, especially once I started using TypeScript. You get all of the benefits of C# and JavaScript all in one. If you've built a REST API with Python/Flask/Django, you'll be able to learn Node.js/Express/TypeScript well enough to migrate your API very fast and it's incredibly easy to host for free on any number of services.

I'm new to Go, I've got very little experience but the 'feel' of Go, isn't like Python in my opinion. Go has a pretty steep learning curve, much steeper than C# in my opinion. So if you are willing to consider Node/Express/TypeScript, I think you may really like it. If you're picking between Go and C#, I'd go for C# as of today, but once I am more comfortable with Go (which I anticipate being a slow process) I may change my mind.

At this moment in time, in late 2020- Node/Express/TypeScript feels like the obvious choice to me as a former C# developer.

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Vadim Bauer
Recommends
on
PythonPython

The best language for you is the one that you know best!

Its a bit of a guess, but from your question and the difficulties you have with Python it seems to me the problem you describe is the manifestation of a bad design/architecture/code quality. These are not the problems of a language itself!

The experience you gained over the past years with your current programming language will outmatch any benefits of another language that you start from zero.

Because in the end of the day languages aren't all that different when it comes to fullfil the same task, it's more the tools, framework and ecosystem for a particular problem that make a difference.

I worked with Java, C#, Go and recently in Phyton, and I would choose Phyton over Go for WebApps, even I like compiled languages more. Go is a very simple language, I would even say maybe too simple. I can't stand all those go boilerplate if err checks, the broken filesystem, the date/time mess and many more things that aren't actually relevant for business application at all. Go has its advantages but not for WebApps.

Keep the lang and improve your skills and architecture you will benifit more from it than from a new language.

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Recommends
on
GolangGolang

I recommend Go for backend. It's younger than C# doesn't mean it's not mature. It's already mature enough to be run on production. You can see there are already many companies in the world adopting Go as their backend business logic or tooling. I can name a few like Github, Shopify, uber, twitch, and many more. It's easier learning curve, low entry barrier, better performance than C#, better memory consumption than C#, since there's no VM/runtime needed. It's suitable for large scale system and large codebase for readibility and long maintainability. It's simpler than C# since no class, inheritance(this can cause hard to maintain software), exception, etc. You can still implement OO way in Go without those feature. Simple file structure, only main files and package files. It compiles to single binary and easy to deploy and work around it, unlike C# who compiled to IL and you need to wrap all those IL files to be run inside separated web server(even .Net/.Net Core platform provide built-in web server). For libs, don't worry, there are many open source libs you will found on Github and already adopted by many companies. Go is employed in personal, startup, even corporate level.

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Recommends
on
GolangGolang
Go now, C# later

I suggest Go because it has a simple and clean ecosystem. The language is simple. You don’t need complex configs or installs either. You’ll be up and running very quickly. It doesn’t have as much as .NET but its standard library is more than sufficient for RESTful APIs. Concurrency is much, much easier too.

C# I’d definitely recommend later on. The .NET framework, especially core, is extremely powerful and there’s little you can’t build with it. Go won’t take you long to be productive with.

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Carlos Iglesias
Recommends

The database your are going to connect and the needed libraries could decide. Because both are awesome languages.

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Alexander Krylkov
Sofrware Architect at Air Astana · | 1 upvotes · 262.2K views
Recommends
on
C#C#

I would recommend C#, particularly Simplify.Web web-framework. C# is easy to start with (especially .NET Core). Simplify.Web is also easy to start with, no extra setup required for simple API, but on the other hand you have power of C# and full control over your API with ability to extend.

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Recommends
on
C#C#

I have some systems on production using both languages. I tend to use golang if the API is small or medium size, but if I am going to build a large system definitively I use c#(asp netcore).

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Ted Elliott
Recommends
on
fastapifastapipydanticpydantic

If you want to stick with python you may want to consider Fastapi. It uses Pydantic to give you strongly typed models and validation. It generates openapi docs for you out of the box. They have good documentation as well and they claim it is really fast.

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Decisions about C# and Crystal
Ing. Alvaro Rodríguez Scelza
Software Systems Engineer at Ripio · | 12 upvotes · 353.1K views

I was considering focusing on learning RoR and looking for a work that uses those techs.

After some investigation, I decided to stay with C# .NET:

  • It is more requested on job positions (7 to 1 in my personal searches average).

  • It's been around for longer.

  • it has better documentation and community.

  • One of Ruby advantages (its amazing community gems, that allows to quickly build parts of your systems by merely putting together third party components) gets quite complicated to use and maintain in huge applications, where building and reusing your own components may become a better approach.

  • Rail's front end support is starting to waver.

  • C# .NET code is far easier to understand, debug and maintain. Although certainly not easier to learn from scratch.

  • Though Rails has an excellent programming speed, C# tends to get the upper hand in long term projects.

I would avise to stick to rails when building small projects, and switching to C# for more long term ones.

Opinions are welcome!

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Andrew Carpenter
Chief Software Architect at Xelex Digital, LLC · | 16 upvotes · 398.2K views

In 2015 as Xelex Digital was paving a new technology path, moving from ASP.NET web services and web applications, we knew that we wanted to move to a more modular decoupled base of applications centered around REST APIs.

To that end we spent several months studying API design patterns and decided to use our own adaptation of CRUD, specifically a SCRUD pattern that elevates query params to a more central role via the Search action.

Once we nailed down the API design pattern it was time to decide what language(s) our new APIs would be built upon. Our team has always been driven by the right tool for the job rather than what we know best. That said, in balancing practicality we chose to focus on 3 options that our team had deep experience with and knew the pros and cons of.

For us it came down to C#, JavaScript, and Ruby. At the time we owned our infrastructure, racks in cages, that were all loaded with Windows. We were also at a point that we were using that infrastructure to it's fullest and could not afford additional servers running Linux. That's a long way of saying we decided against Ruby as it doesn't play nice on Windows.

That left us with two options. We went a very unconventional route for deciding between the two. We built MVP APIs on both. The interfaces were identical and interchangeable. What we found was easily quantifiable differences.

We were able to iterate on our Node based APIs much more rapidly than we were our C# APIs. For us this was owed to the community coupled with the extremely dynamic nature of JS. There were tradeoffs we considered, latency was (acceptably) higher on requests to our Node APIs. No strong types to protect us from ourselves, but we've rarely found that to be an issue.

As such we decided to commit resources to our Node APIs and push it out as the core brain of our new system. We haven't looked back since. It has consistently met our needs, scaling with us, getting better with time as continually pour into and expand our capabilities.

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Erik Ralston
Chief Architect at LiveTiles · | 14 upvotes · 546.3K views

C# and .Net were obvious choices for us at LiveTiles given our investment in the Microsoft ecosystem. It enabled us to harness of the .Net framework to build ASP.Net MVC, WebAPI, and Serverless applications very easily. Coupled with the high productivity of Visual Studio, it's the native tongue of Microsoft technology.

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Pros of C#
Pros of Crystal
  • 351
    Cool syntax
  • 292
    Great lambda support
  • 264
    Great generics support
  • 210
    Language integrated query (linq)
  • 180
    Extension methods
  • 94
    Automatic garbage collection
  • 89
    Properties with get/set methods
  • 83
    Backed by microsoft
  • 71
    Automatic memory management
  • 61
    Amaizing Crossplatform Support
  • 46
    High performance
  • 42
    LINQ
  • 37
    Beautiful
  • 34
    Great ecosystem of community packages with Nuget
  • 26
    Vibrant developer community
  • 23
    Great readability
  • 21
    Dead-simple asynchronous programming with async/await
  • 19
    Visual Studio - Great IDE
  • 17
    Open source
  • 16
    Productive
  • 15
    Strongly typed by default, dynamic typing when needed
  • 15
    Object oriented programming paradigm
  • 12
    Easy separation of config/application code
  • 11
    Great community
  • 10
    OOPS simplified with great syntax
  • 9
    Cool
  • 9
    Operator overloading
  • 8
    Good language to teach OO concepts
  • 8
    Events management using delegates
  • 8
    High-performance
  • 7
    Linq expressions
  • 7
    Unity
  • 6
    Conditional compilation
  • 6
    Coherent language backed by an extensive CLR
  • 5
    Top level code
  • 5
    Comprehensive platform libraries
  • 5
    Organized and clean
  • 4
    Concise syntax, productivity designed
  • 3
    Lovely
  • 2
    Statically typed
  • 1
    Sophisticated overall
  • 1
    Far more sleek and sphisticated than other languages
  • 1
    Interfaces
  • 0
    Interfaces
  • 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
  • 18
    Super Fast
  • 18
    Typed Ruby <3
  • 17
    Open Source
  • 14
    Minimal Runtime
  • 11
    Cute
  • 9
    Clean code
  • 9
    Concurrent
  • 9
    Productive
  • 4
    Great community
  • 2
    Feels like duck types, safe like static types
  • 2
    Null Safety
  • 2
    Type inference
  • 2
    Program compiled into a single binary
  • 2
    Powerful
  • 2
    Meta-Programming (via Macros)
  • 2
    Simplicity
  • 1
    Has builtin LLVM support library
  • 1
    Statically linked binaries that are simple to deploy
  • 1
    Fun to write
  • 1
    High-performance
  • 1
    Simple, minimal syntax
  • 1
    Compile time statically safe macros
  • 1
    Concise
  • 1
    Statically Safe Monkey Patching
  • 1
    Fibers
  • 1
    Spawn
  • 1
    Meta-programming
  • 1
    Cross-platform
  • 1
    Productivity
  • 1
    Elegant

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Cons of C#
Cons of Crystal
  • 15
    Poor x-platform GUI support
  • 8
    Closed source
  • 7
    Fast and secure
  • 7
    Requires DllImportAttribute for getting stuff from unma
  • 13
    Small community
  • 3
    No windows support
  • 1
    No Oracle lib

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What is 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.

What is Crystal?

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.

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What companies use C#?
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What tools integrate with Crystal?

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What are some alternatives to C# and 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.
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.
PHP
Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.
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!
See all alternatives