Cacher is the code snippet organizer for pro developers

Open Source code doesn’t always come in big complex packages. At ProPublica we sometimes share small, simple snippets of using GitHub "Gists." These Gists range from single-byte file delimiters to an entire JavaScript framework for making stepper graphics. They rarely have documentation and don’t even always have names, but they can be super-useful. Here are some we’ve shared over the past few years:

• A simple way to grab remote template elements in your Rails app (after Brian Boyer's RemoteSnippets) https://gist.github.com/1664329
• A single byte gist that contains ASCII character 28, which the FEC uses as a field delimiter. https://gist.github.com/2191300
• A [quine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine_(computing) in Ruby https://gist.github.com/523940
• Check links on a page using JavaScript https://gist.github.com/1502737
• Convert state abbreviations to and from AP Style in JavaScript (requires Underscore) https://gist.github.com/1006390
• Find out if you have permission to publish to a user's Facebook stream, using JavaScript https://gist.github.com/1181004
• Grab U.S. Code by statute using Ruby https://gist.github.com/861266
• JavaScript color generator based on Tyson Evan's color pallete https://gist.github.com/1558470
• Natural language document clustering in Ruby https://gist.github.com/1508278
• Non-strict CSV parser in Ruby https://gist.github.com/1684042
• Parse Unix diffs using Ruby https://gist.github.com/335891
• Poor Man's Fech, in Ruby https://gist.github.com/1405852
• Rake task to build github pages https://gist.github.com/891157
• Ruby code to purge Amazon CloudFront cache https://gist.github.com/1630177
• Shell script to download TIGER/Line shapefiles https://gist.github.com/885812
• Simple dynamic page titles for Rails https://gist.github.com/981957
• Simple JavaScript graphing framework https://gist.github.com/1690779
• Simple Ruby benchmark https://gist.github.com/987477
• Stepper graphic framework using JavaScript https://gist.github.com/1703708
• Turn CSVs into JSON, in Ruby https://gist.github.com/1334996
• Turn hashtags in git commit messages into git tags using Ruby https://gist.github.com/826360

Naturally, this post is available as a gist, too.