Hi all

I am thinking of undertaking a serious career move.

Currently I work day to day with ColdFusion 9+, and some Java in a Windows environment. My background is Java/JSP etc prior to ColdFusion.

I'm considering a move towards Ruby / Rails on Linux as I think it would be a real challenge, keep things fresh and would stand me in good stead for the next few years. There are also more jobs in this area.

I would consider myself an experienced web professional. I do TDD and I understand good OO design concepts. I have worked for the past few years on a busy transactional gaming website with all the security and performance challenges that entails. I have also contributed to an open source ColdFusion project recently and I am a active member of the CF community on StackOverflow .

In order to maintain my current remuneration (!) etc. I would like to get up to speed on Ruby / Rails and Linux before I go job hunting. The idea is that I can demonstrate enough proficiency in these new skills and combined with my other language / programming / architectural and performance experience I have I'll be a good candidate.

I am building a personal website in Rails 3.0 on Ubuntu which I hope will expose me to lots of Rails/Ruby and I am reading a few books. What else can I do?

Has anyone made this type of move, and if so would they have any tips apart from what I've mentioned? Is there any areas around Rails/Ruby/Linux that I have to get up to speed with?

Any and all tips are appreciated.