# Know Ruby? Enter Crystal!

[Crystal](http://crystal-lang.org/) programming language is super interesting. I've spent the time checking out Crystal and digging through what is available, and wrote it all down as I learned.

#### Frequently Asked Questions

**Who are you?**

I'm [**Serdar Dogruyol**](https://github.com/sdogruyol), and I've been a Crystalist for years now. I'm the author of [Kemal](http://kemalcr.com/), curator of [Crystal Weekly](http://www.crystalweekly.com/) and a [Crystal Core Member](https://github.com/orgs/crystal-lang/people).

I love new programming languages, and while I've been using Ruby for the past years, I've coded in Java, PHP, Crystal, Elixir and a host of others. I also love writing, and good documentation, which is hard to find. Crystal doesn't have a lot of that yet, so I'm pitching in!

**Why Crystal?**

I've written [a blog post](http://serdardogruyol.com/why-crystal) dedicated to this, but basically, Crystal is good at everything Ruby is not good at...plus as a Rubyist you already know some Crystal.

**What am I getting?**

Basically, you can read the whole thing online for free!

**Do I have to know Ruby?**

Really, I love alliteration: the only thing the **'for Rubyists'** really means is that I assume you don't know about types, pointers, concurrency, or similar things. That's okay, you've never had to think about them before! I explain this stuff in extra depth. If you program in another dynamically typed language, you'll be just fine. If you program in another typed language, you'll be more than fine.

**Where can I find some Crystal Libraries (Shards)?**

* [awesome-crystal](https://github.com/veelenga/awesome-crystal) has a curated list of Crystal shards.
* [crystalshards.org](https://crystalshards.org/) lists all of the available Crystal shards on GitHub (similar to rubygems.org)
* [Here is a list of some popular Ruby gems that have been ported to Crystal](https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal/wiki/Crystal-Shards-for-Ruby-Gems).