Explain like I only speak in plain English

RubyGems is a package manager for Ruby libraries. RubyGems is used to deal with installation, removal, updates of Ruby libraries. RubyGems libraries are called Gems for short.

There are countless Ruby libraries, or Gems, available that provide all sorts of functionalities. Gems can drastically reduce development time of projects as engineers don't have to write all the features themselves.

RubyGems comes bundled with Ruby as the default package manager since Ruby v1.9. The most famous Ruby Gem is Ruby on Rails, a web application framework for creating websites and related services.

Explain like I'm a total nerd

To avoid reinventing the wheel, engineers create and share standalone programs for a specific use case as a library, also called package, for others to easily incorporate into their projects.

RubyGems' job is to manage those packages, this includes package creation, package hosting, package downloading, package versioning, package management in a project and more.

RubyGems is often used together with another program called Bundler. Bundler helps engineers track the Gems and versions required in a project.

You can browse through available Gems on https://rubygems.org/.

Explain like I like videos

Explain like I already know it

Use Gems that are well maintained to reduce the number of potential future issues when it comes to updating the project. Avoid using Gems, libraries in general, for small tasks that you can write myself.

Ruby on Rails

Ruby on Rails is a web application framework built using the programming language Ruby. It is very popular amongst early stage startups with small teams as you can create a working website very quickly.

Library

In programming, a library is a collection of programs that perform specific tasks. Engineers incorporate libraries into their projects so they don't have to write the programs themselves, to save development time.

Ruby

Ruby is a general purpose programming language that you can use to write all sorts of programs. It is the base language of the popular web applications framework called Ruby on Rails.

Bundler

Bundler ensures a Ruby project is run in the same condition on different machines consistently. It does this by keeping track of a list of Gems and their versions required for a project to run correctly.