When I began at thoughtbot in 2014, like everyone else in the org, I got involved in the hiring process. I’d chat with candidates, and what I found most surprising was when I asked how they knew of us, many of them were users, contributors, or fans of our open source.
People enthused about the blog, talks at conferences, or particularly useful gems that got them out of a jam or helped them reach an “a-ha” moment. Gradually it dawned on me that this company had a meaningful stake in a much larger community. In fact, many of my teammates were once this candidate in front of me now.
I was particularly tickled when someone would talk about their favorite open-source tool, and I’d say, “Oh yeah, one of the people working on that is right over there. Let’s go talk with them.”
We are still massive fans of each other. We understand that open source in its many forms is the foundation of our continuous improvement, sharing, and learning from each other.
When we build open source, it’s for the good of the community. And earnestly, it’s an attempt to build a community of good.
To celebrate thoughtbot’s 20th anniversary, here’s a list of our 20 Most Starred Open-Source Repos on GitHub, and a selection of repos to which we contribute or maintain.
🎉 thoughtbot20 CTA: Tell us your open-source story!
- Tell us about your favorite or most useful thoughtbot open source. How do you use it? What has it meant to you?
- Tag your post with #thoughtbot20 on Twitter or Mastodon for a chance to win thoughtbot swag in a drawing! Thanks for being on this journey with us.
| Rank | Name | Description | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | guides | A guide for programming in style. | - |
| 2 | bourbon | A Lightweight Sass Tool Set | Ruby & Sass |
| 3 | paperclip | Easy file attachment management for ActiveRecord | Ruby |
| 4 | laptop | A shell script to set up a macOS laptop for web and mobile development. | Shell |
| 5 | factory_bot | A library for setting up Ruby objects as test data. | Ruby |
| 6 | dotfiles | A set of vim, zsh, git, and tmux configuration files. | Shell |
| 7 | administrate | A Rails engine that helps you put together a super-flexible admin dashboard. | Ruby |
| 8 | neat | [no longer maintained] A lightweight and flexible Sass grid | Ruby & Sass |
| 9 | suspenders | A Rails template with our standard defaults, ready to deploy to Heroku. | Ruby |
| 10 | til | Today I Learned | - |
| 11 | clearance | Rails authentication with email & password. | Ruby |
| 12 | Argo | Functional JSON parsing library for Swift | Swift |
| 13 | shoulda-matchers | Simple one-liner tests for common Rails functionality | Ruby |
| 14 | high_voltage | Easily include static pages in your Rails app. | Ruby |
| 15 | rcm | rc file (dotfile) management | Perl |
| 16 | factory_bot_rails | Factory Bot ♥ Rails | Ruby |
| 17 | shoulda | Makes tests easy on the fingers and the eyes | Ruby |
| 18 | expandable-recycler-view | Custom Android RecyclerViewAdapters that collapse and expand | Java |
| 19 | capybara-webkit[archive] | [archive] A Capybara driver for headless WebKit to test JavaScript web apps | Ruby |
| 20 | gitsh | An interactive shell for git | Ruby |
