Because it is a nice language to write elegant and performant code in. If that is not enough motivation I guess it is not a language for you.

The challenge for Crystal is that we also have TruffleRuby which gets you the elegance and Ruby interop. To me Crystal feels like it's at the same time too different to Ruby to benefit from the similarity and too similar to create its own viable niche.

HN is full of cynical comments like the above. We should be celebrating people trying things and doing things differently... I can almost guarantee you that the person who posted this cynical comment is not working on anything particularly relevant or useful.

My message to the HN community: HN is literally bankrolled by YC. If Crystal doesn't deserve to exist because other languages exist, why exactly should I care about your bullshit uber-for-dogs startup, or whatever not particularly original AI crap you think you're changing the world with these days? Get real. If you want people to be open to your ideas, maybe you ought to make an effort to be open to the ideas of others, and cultivate a climate where discussing different ideas is possible. Don't treat every HN post as an opportunity to opine on how you think the work of other people is flawed.