Five Essentials For Your Ruby Toolbox

uby, the dynamic, interpreted programming language that adopts a pure object-oriented approach, has been gaining popularity among programmers. While many of Ruby's new converts are primarily developing Web applications, Ruby has a great history (much of it in Japan) as a separate language in its own right. Only recently are developers in the West beginning to understand the significant advantages Ruby has over other scripting languages such as Perl and Python, or even more established enterprise-level languages such as Java.

If you are one of those who recently boarded the Ruby bandwagon, you may not be sure which of the many available Ruby tools and libraries are most helpful to your development. This article looks at five essential tools and libraries that Ruby developers should have in their arsenal to be able to get the most out of the language.