That matches my experience, so I guess it may be a decent experience for someone new to the language and a bit more frustrating for someone more experienced on it (like me).
Crystal is great! Which LLMs were used in that project? In my short and not very recent experience the LLM frequently mixed up Crystal and Ruby in the code they write.
I missed seeing what the developer experience of the RubyMine debugger would be for this specific problem. Mentioning its advantages is good, but you have the perfect chance to putting it into action in front of your audience!
As for USB cables, I replaced all of them with a set of decent USB-C cables plus a few sets of “USB-C to *” adapters.
I now have a small box with separate sections for the adapters, plus a zip bag with USB-C cables that takes 20% of the space and fits 80% (and growing) of my use cases.
Very compelling architecture for projects that don't require massive horizontal scaling. Those looking for replicas/backups can add Litestream https://litestream.io