I’ve been looking to update my full Ruby development stack and see what all the cool kids are using. I love when Rails Rumble wraps up and they break down what everyone used, it’s one of those dog food moments for the community. While it’s a great yearly pulse, it’s not a full look into the community offering to figure out what the best ruby libraries are. Ruby Rumble is a 48 hour competition, a MVP race if you will. Chances are there are many facets of development that go untouched in an MVP so their associated libraries go unaccounted for. At this point, people are interested in the fastest development library, not necessarily the best long term decision. So where can you go to see what’s hot, popular, or the most active? I know of two such places.
Awesome Ruby
A high level list, grouped by categories that link to the project’s home page. Simple and to the point, no fluff.
The Ruby Toolbox
A more complete communal approach to the concept, including related / alternative plugins ranked against each other. There is a comments area, announcements, basically everything you would expect in a community discussion about a topic.
What Did I Find?
I came across a few gems that looked pretty interesting. I might not have an immediate need for them or they might not be the most popular, but they’ll definitely be in the back of my mind if they solve a problem I’m looking at.
- Draper
- Decorators/View-Models for Rails Applications.
- Abracadabra
- The gem that swaps out text with a fully-compliant Rails form in one click.
- Crêpe
- The thin API stack.