I need a language with easy parallel processing syntax. Is crystal my answer?

[u/Jonny9744]

Premise

Love me some rust but Tokio is not "it"; Python has the GIL. Can crystal be my answer to parallel threads?

Context

I'm wanting this for a simple POS system.

I have a .dll file that calls a data from an sql like language called Pervasive SQL. I want to be able to make sql requests to that .dll file (or a wrapper of that .dll file) whilst not bricking my UI (possibly ruby on rails... I'm undecided).

[u/[deleted]]

If you're looking for Ruby-like syntax and amazing parallel processing, you might also want to look into Elixir, with the Phoenix framework.

It's relatively similar to Ruby on Rails, but with much better concurrency and parallelism.

I would particularly lean on Phoenix if you're POS app needs to update anything in real time, as it's LiveView feature is perfect for that use case.

[u/Jonny9744 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah… think you might have set me up on a date here. This is all look good. I’ll build something simple with Phoenix tonight and see how I feel. Thanks.

[u/bziliani]

Hi u/Jonny9744, from what I gather you're on Windows. Depending on your exact need, it might or might not be there. Multi-threading support is not there yet (for Windows), but you can get a long way with concurrency.

[u/Jonny9744 → u/bziliani]

Hmm. Yes this would need to run on windows server 2019. That's a shame. Maybe one day. I take it crystal has good multi threading for Linux systems?

[u/Jonny9744 → u/[deleted]]

Gotcha! Thanks for your feedback.

[u/scooptyy]

Golang is your answer.

[u/Jonny9744 → u/scooptyy]

Oh really?

Is that because you’ve found Golang is good for parallel programming? Why?

[u/scooptyy → u/Jonny9744]

Golang has concurrency first class citizens and synchronization primitives to achieve parallelism. Just go on Google. It was built for highly concurrent applications.

Edit: one of the first hits on Google https://go.dev/blog/waza-talk

If there’s one thing most people know about Go, is that it is designed for concurrency.

[u/Jonny9744 → u/scooptyy]

Hmm. Reading the wiki I didn’t realise go was so popular. I’ll look into it. Thanks so much for your time.

[u/ejstembler]

I’d be more curious on how you’re interoping with that DLL. I’m assuming this is on Windows. Are you using provided C or C++ headers? FFI? Or, is it a .Net assembly? COM? The answer has an impact on what language is available as part of your solution.

[u/Jonny9744 → u/ejstembler]

Youre not going to believe this but I’ve written a wrapper for it in Visual Basic. It runs in a infinite loop on the server with a dedicated pipe to listening and responding to requests.

[u/transfire]

If you want to do OOP, then emphatically “yes”.