BoxLang vs. Crystal vs. Python vs. Visual Basic 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.

Visual Basic is an object-oriented programming language developed by Microsoft. Using Visual Basic makes it fast and easy to create type-safe .NET apps. Visual Basic focuses on supplying more of the features of the Visual Basic Runtime (microsoft.visualbasic.dll) to .NET Core and is the first version of Visual Basic focused on .NET Core. Many portions of the Visual Basic Runtime depend on WinForms and these will be added in a later version of Visual Basic. .NET is a free, open-source development platform for building many kinds of apps. With .NET, your code and project files look and feel the same no matter which type of app you're building. You have access to the same runtime, API, and language capabilities with each app. A Visual Basic program is built up from standard building blocks. A solution comprises one or more projects. A project in turn can contain one or more assemblies. Each assembly is compiled from one or more source files.