I’m hunting for some gems that are under loved, off the beaten path,
poorly documented, or just lesser known yet still wickedly useful. I
think something like NArray or RBTree falls into this category.
I would love to receive other suggestions. Send me links to the
projects you don’t see used all the time but you just couldn’t live
without. Please send code with your suggestions or point me towards
some code on the Web if you can, so I can understand how to use the
project.
I’m collecting this information for a conference speech I’m planning,
by the way.
Thanks for the ideas.
James Edward G. II
James G. wrote:
I’m hunting for some gems that are under loved, off the beaten path,
poorly documented, or just lesser known yet still wickedly useful. I
think something like NArray or RBTree falls into this category.
IIRC NArray has never been packaged as a gem! Talk about under-loved! 
On Apr 11, 2008, at 9:07 PM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
James G. wrote:
I’m hunting for some gems that are under loved, off the beaten
path, poorly documented, or just lesser known yet still wickedly
useful. I think something like NArray or RBTree falls into this
category.
IIRC NArray has never been packaged as a gem! Talk about under-
loved! 
Just, to be clear, I’ll take non-gems if they are worth the effort. I
just liked the name “Hidden Gems.”
However, it does seem there is a gem in this case:
$ gem query -r --name-matches narray
*** REMOTE GEMS ***
Bulk updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org/
narray (0.5.9.4)
James Edward G. II
On Apr 11, 2008, at 3:39 PM, James G. wrote:
I’m collecting this information for a conference speech I’m
planning, by the way.
Thanks for the ideas.
James Edward G. II
require ‘gsl’
a @ http://codeforpeople.com/
On Apr 11, 2008, at 8:07 PM, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
James G. wrote:
I’m hunting for some gems that are under loved, off the beaten
path, poorly documented, or just lesser known yet still wickedly
useful. I think something like NArray or RBTree falls into this
category.
IIRC NArray has never been packaged as a gem! Talk about under-
loved!
cfp:~ > gem list|grep narray
narray (0.5.9.4)
a @ http://codeforpeople.com/
On Apr 11, 2008, at 14:39 PM, James G. wrote:
I’m collecting this information for a conference speech I’m
planning, by the way.
We just crossed 3,000 gems last week, so here’s the oldest ~ 3%:
require ‘rubygems’
require ‘rubygems/source_info_cache’
si = Gem::SourceInfoCache.cache_data[Gem.sources.first].source_index
puts si.map { |n,spec| spec }.sort_by { |spec|
spec.date }.first(100).map { |spec| spec.full_name }
progressbar-0.0.3
cgikit-1.1.0
statistics-2001.2.28
Ook-1.0.2
RubyJDWP-0.0.1
log4r-1.0.5
dbdbd-0.2.2
rdf-0.3
keyedlist-0.4.0
captcha-0.1.2
rublog-0.8.0
fingerserver-0.4.0
ikko-0.1
regexp-engine-0.9
stream-0.5
VRTools-0.0.1
rvsh-0.4.5
libgnucap-ruby-0.1
iterator-0.8
csbattery-0.2.2
csinterface-0.6.2
sds-0.3
ObjectGraph-1.0.1
ruby-doom-0.8
cstemplate-0.5.1
kreed-0.0.2
neelix-0.0.3
ladspar-0.1
cardinal-0.1.0
mw-template-0.9.1
MultipartAlternativeLite-0.0.1
ncurses-0.9.1
ruby-cache-0.3.0
XMMS-Ruby-0.1.2
Joystick-Ruby-0.1.0
rdf-redland-0.5.1.3
aversa-0.3
BlueCloth-1.0.0
sqlite-2.0.1
copland-lib-0.1.0
copland-remote-0.1.0
copland-webrick-0.1.0
an-app-0.0.3
packrat-0.1.0
libxosd2-ruby-0.4
libxosd-ruby-0.4
rlirc-0.3.1
swin-2004.03.14-x86-mswin32
vruby-2004.08.07
wxrubylayouts-0.0.3
termios-0.9.4
Syndic8-Ruby-0.2.0
Technorati-Ruby-0.1.0
ctapi-0.2.2
jobserver-0.1.4
Rubilicious-0.1.2
yip-0.8.2
complearn-0.6.2
Rodo-1.1
dnssd-0.6.0
copland-1.0.0
dev-utils-1.0.1
SimpleSearch-0.5.0
diff-lcs-1.1.2
xhtmldiff-1.0.0
formvalidator-0.1.3
jpeg2pdf-0.12
algorithm-diff-0.1
test-unit-mock-0.30
io-reactor-0.05
ruvi-0.4.12
crosscase-0.0.1
posixlock-0.0.1
latex-0.1.3
text-highlight-1.0.2
IO-Reactor-0.0.6
rubypants-0.2.0
Ruby-MemCache-0.0.1
sstruct-1.0.1
needle-extras-1.0.0
realrand-1.0.2
hprevalence-0.2.0
genx4r-0.05
libbz2-0.4
Asami-0.04
extensions-0.6.0
text-hyphen-1.0.0
PrettyException-0.9.5
tex-hyphen-0.5.0
ruwiki-0.9.3
net-tftp-0.1.0
xmlresume2x-0.2.1
creditcard-1.0
Bloglines4R-0.1.0
x10-cm17a-1.0.1
x10-cm17a-1.0.1-x86-mswin32
text-reform-0.2.0
dbus-0.1.10
sqlite-ruby-2.2.3
sqlite-ruby-2.2.3-x86-mswin32
The oldest in this list, progressbar-0.0.3 has a date of:
$ gem spec -r progressbar | grep date
date: 2004-03-13 05:56:48.508436 -08:00
The newest in this list:
$ gem spec -r sqlite-ruby | grep date
date: 2005-01-29 21:00:00 -08:00
From: Eric H. [mailto:[email protected]]
$ gem spec -r progressbar | grep date
date: 2004-03-13 05:56:48.508436 -08:00
yikes, didn’t know it was that old. I’ve been using it all the time 
thanks for the gems, eric.
kind regards -botp
On Apr 11, 2008, at 10:38 PM, ara.t.howard wrote:
towards some code on the Web if you can, so I can understand how to
use the project.
I’m collecting this information for a conference speech I’m
planning, by the way.
Thanks for the ideas.
James Edward G. II
require ‘gsl’
I bet that’s great library, but, not being a scientist, I’m probably
the wrong guy to talk it up. Thanks for the suggestion though Ara.
I ma bug you when I start trying to make good NArray examples for
similar reasons…
James Edward G. II
On Apr 11, 2008, at 11:52 PM, Eric H. wrote:
use the project.
I’m collecting this information for a conference speech I’m
planning, by the way.
We just crossed 3,000 gems last week, so here’s the oldest ~ 3%:
Thank you Eric. I will try to comb through this list and see if
anything catches my eye.
If anyone has favorites in the selection though, please point them out
for me.
James Edward G. II
James G. wrote:
However, it does seem there is a gem in this case:
$ gem query -r --name-matches narray
Was surprised by this and by the existence of an rbtree gem. Yay!
On Apr 13, 2008, at 7:40 AM, James G. wrote:
I bet that’s great library, but, not being a scientist, I’m probably
the wrong guy to talk it up. Thanks for the suggestion though Ara.
A) it’s the single biggest ruby project after rails. think about that!
B) take 50% of the list where people say ‘ruby is too slow at XXXX’ or
why can’t i do ‘XXX’ - the gsl is by far the largest container of
algorithms on rubyforge, but orders of magnitude, it’s not just
science: scan this list
http://rb-gsl.rubyforge.org/ref.html
and you’ll see things like ‘complex numbers’, ‘vectors’, ‘matrices’
‘permutations’, ‘FFT’, ‘random number generation’, ‘statistics’, and
‘NArray compatibilities’
scan the list of ruby quizes and you’ll see where i’m headed
I ma bug you when I start trying to make good NArray examples for
similar reasons…
sure. the fact that these two libs work together is immensely powerful.
check this out
http://codeforpeople.com/katrina/fast/
and here is the code
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/155483
using narray in combination of mmap.
cheers.
a @ http://codeforpeople.com/
On Sun, Apr 13, 2008 at 11:11 AM, ara.t.howard [email protected]
wrote:
On Apr 13, 2008, at 7:40 AM, James G. wrote:
I bet that’s great library, but, not being a scientist, I’m probably the
wrong guy to talk it up. Thanks for the suggestion though Ara.
I just want to agree with Ara. A substantial benefit of GSL is that
for non-scientists, the collection of algorithms does a lot of the
dirty work that one doesn’t have to code up but that often is
necessary.
Having a GSL gem would be handy, and take it a step toward more usable
for people that want it (or libraries that might want to use it).
In addition, thoughts on nicely handling how to “downgrade” based on
the C version of GSL installed would be a great addition.
Cameron
Sorry for the delayed response, I’ve been on vacation.
On Apr 13, 2008, at 10:11 AM, ara.t.howard wrote:
On Apr 13, 2008, at 7:40 AM, James G. wrote:
I bet that’s great library, but, not being a scientist, I’m
probably the wrong guy to talk it up. Thanks for the suggestion
though Ara.
A) it’s the single biggest ruby project after rails. think about
that!
I didn’t know that. That is interesting.
scan the list of ruby quizes and you’ll see where i’m headed
Yeah, these are all good points. I’ll give it some deeper
consideration. Thanks!
James Edward G. II