The Crystal programming language is very nice. It is a typed, compiled language with excellent performance. The syntax is inspired by Ruby but is not identical to Ruby (by design).
The all-important version 1.0 milestone was reached in March 2021. The next version (1.3) is scheduled for release in January 2022.
Some downsides to Crystal:
- No Windows version: Estimate for a Windows version is still not known - this will obviously turn away Windows developers. Crystal can be run via WSL (Windows Sub-system for Linux), but it's not ideal.
- Slow(ish) compilation.
- Small community: This isn't necessarily a problem, but as a new language you won't find the same learning resources and online discussions as more popular languages. However, the standard library is quite well fleshed out.