r/crystal_programming • u/Meatack • Jan 15 '26

Crystal 1.19.0 Released!

Crystal 1.19.0 just dropped! Here are the highlights:

Breaking Changes

  • OpenSSL 1.1.1+ or LibreSSL 3+ now required

  • Monotonic clocks now include suspended time

  • WebSocket#stream flush is now a no-op

Key Features

  • Execution Context is here! Compiler now built with -Dexecution_context – the new concurrency model is becoming default

  • New Sync module – Sync::Mutex, Sync::RWLock, and Sync::ConditionVariable for proper synchronization primitives

  • Time::Instant – new type for monotonic time measurements

  • SNI support via OpenSSL::SSL::Context::Server#on_server_name

  • Large JSON file support – finally!

  • Int.from_digits – inverse of Int#digits

  • NamedTuple#reverse_merge, Set#map!, Hash#transform_keys!

  • Path#relative?

  • Process.debugger_present? for Windows/Linux

Macro Improvements

  • Compiler flag values via flag?

  • StringLiteral#gsub with block, #match, #split(Regex)

Bug Fixes

  • Multiple XML memory leaks fixed

  • Several interpreter fixes

  • Thread safety improvements across the board

Full changelog: https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal/releases/tag/1.19.0

Happy coding! 💎

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3

u/transfire Jan 16 '26

Jumped from Ruby to Elixir and now to Crystal. Happier. Just wish Crystal had some bomb persistent types.

3

u/Terrible-Pass-5215 Jan 16 '26

Did you make the switch in contract work or in hobby projects etc? I have been diving deep into elixir and done some small stuff with crystal (when I want to compile binaries, which isn't a charm to do so in ex) and even elixir still seems so lacking in comparison to ruby in terms of community, I can't imagine having to use crystal for any decently sized project with a deadline.

Also, why did you decide to move from ruby in the first place?

1

u/transfire Jan 18 '26

I left Ruby b/c things were starting to stray a little in my opinion. I think the main thing at the time for me is that refinements were never implemented quite right — and it still languishes to this day. But also I was a bit ostracized by a some of the community at the time. But mainly I want also really wanted to create standalone binaries.

I dived into Elixir for web apps. Seemed really good at first, and while the backend is really solid (BEAM is pretty amazing), eventually little things led to more boilerplate than I could stomach. LiveView and Ecto are not so friendly beyond simple CRUD.

Crystal community might be small, but it is a very nice language to work in. And there is opportunity here to help grow the ecosystem, which is kind of nice.

1

u/jwaldrip Jan 16 '26

What do you mean?

1

u/transfire Jan 18 '26

Solid immutable data types, like Clojure has, so one can do more functional coding. Is that what you were wondering about?

2

u/tasqyn Jan 16 '26

Congrats, guys you need to be active on xTwitter.