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There's no need to reinvent the wheel. There are over 30,000 RubyGems available on just RubyGems.org, alone. But with so many out there, it must be impossible to find the right one, right? In this talk we'll learn about some resources which help you find the right gems, as well as how to intelligently decide if a library is right for your project. Help us caption & translate this video! http://amara.org/v/FGiq/
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In the video titled **"How to Find Valuable Gems"** by Nathan Bibler at Rails Conf 2012, the main focus is on guiding beginner developers on how to effectively search for and evaluate RubyGems, essential libraries for Ruby applications. The discussion highlights the approximately **38,000 gems available** on RubyGems.org and the challenges in identifying the most suitable libraries for specific projects. ### Key Points Discussed: - **Finding Gems:** The process of locating appropriate gems can seem daunting. Users often start by simply searching on RubyGems.org, which lacks effective categorization, making it hard for beginners to know which gem to use. - **Community Resources:** The speaker encourages leveraging community resources such as Ruby 5, Ruby Flow, and blog posts for helpful insights and recommendations about popular and new gems. - **Evaluating Gems:** A significant portion of the talk focuses on how to assess the value of a gem: - **Documentation:** A well-documented gem is likely to show that the maintainer cares about the user experience. - **Source Code Access:** Being able to view a gem's source code can provide insight into its quality and potential issues. - **Dependencies:** It's crucial to check what other libraries a gem depends on, as this impacts maintainability and potential conflicts in applications. - **Issue Tracking:** Assessing the handling of issues on platforms like GitHub helps gauge the active maintenance and responsiveness of the gem's maintainer. - **Versioning:** Understanding semantic versioning is vital. A proper versioning scheme can indicate how updates may affect applications using the gem. - **Practical Examples:** The talk references various gems such as Cucumber for testing and discusses the implications of using low-utility gems like those to retrieve a list of U.S. states, suggesting that sometimes it's more pragmatic to write simple functions than to incorporate external dependencies for trivial tasks. - **Maintainers' Reputation:** The maintainers' commitment to their project is highlighted, stressing that active project maintenance is a key factor in deciding whether to use a gem. ### Conclusion: Bibler wraps up by emphasizing the importance of a thoughtful evaluation process when it comes to selecting gems. He encourages viewers to leverage community insight and take the time to understand the gems they're considering for their projects, ultimately advocating for wise dependency management in software development.
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