Using ENV in Ruby is like using raw SQL statements - it feels wrong, because it is. If you agree, this gem is for you. The benefits over using ENV directly: - much friendlier stubbing in tests - you no longer have to care whether false is "0" or "false" or whatever - NO MORE ALL CAPS EVERYWHERE! - keys become methods - namespaces which can be passed around as objects - you can subclass! - you can marshal/unmarshal your own types automatically! - strict mode saves you from doing validation yourself - and there's more to come... - it's designed to be as lightweight and as fast as possible compared to ENV - designed to be both hackable and convenient WWW: https://github.com/e2/nenv