Apache Groovy vs. Crystal vs. SQL vs. Solver SDK Comparison Chart

Crystal’s syntax is heavily inspired by Ruby’s, so it feels natural to read and easy to write, and has the added benefit of a lower learning curve for experienced Ruby devs. Crystal is statically type-checked, so any type errors will be caught early by the compiler rather than fail on runtime. Moreover, and to keep the language clean, Crystal has built-in type inference, so most type annotations are unneeded. All types are non-nilable in Crystal, and available variables are represented as a union between the type and nil. As a consequence, the compiler will automatically check for null references in compile time. Crystal’s answer to metaprogramming is a powerful macro system, which ranges from basic templating and AST inspection to types inspection and running arbitrary external programs.

Use optimization and simulation models in your desktop, Web or mobile application. Use the same high-level objects (like Problem, Solver, Variable and Function), collections, properties and methods across different programming languages. The same object-oriented API is exposed "over the wire" through Web Services WS-* standards to remote clients in PHP, JavaScript, C# and other languages. Procedural languages can use conventional calls that correspond naturally to the properties and methods of the Object-Oriented API. Linear and quadratic programming, mixed-integer programming, smooth nonlinear optimization, global optimization, and non-smooth evolutionary and tabu search are all included. The world's best optimizers, from Gurobi™, XPRESS™ and MOSEK™ for linear, quadratic and conic models to KNITRO™, SQP and GRG methods for nonlinear models "plug into" Solver SDK. Easily create a sparse DoubleMatrix object with 1 million rows and columns.