What a surprise to see crystal at the top of HN again! I've been using and contributing to crystal since 2015 too, and I've come to really love the language and community. A big thank you to all the community for being so welcoming!
What I've felt with crystal is that I find it an immensely practical language. Maybe that stems from the compiler being written in crystal. The stdlib has so many things in that make everyday work in the language a joy. For example JSON/YAML/DB.mapping which help you map objects between JSON, YAML and the DB (they're also really fast). Including a standard, performant http stack in the stdlib is a breath of fresh air. The performance of evented io in general is really nice. The concurrency story (channels + fibers) is simple, and doesn't show itself when not required (looking at you nodejs). Most of all, the type system gets out of your way and usually only shows itself when you're making a mistake.