One month into 2007 I seem to have settled on Rails as my new direction of choice, at least for the time being. The way that Rails applications are put together appeals to me and it seems like a good fit for the size of application that I enjoy building. On a more pragmatic level, it also has good buzz and the change of getting work appears, at least in the medium run, to be reasonable (which puts it ahead of some potentially technically superior alternatives for my own particular circumstances).

At this point, though I can hardly claim to be fluent in Rails, I've at least taken a broad survey of the whole framework. I'm reasonably comfortable banging out basic sites that hook up databases to Web pages, and I have some sense of which bits do what. I can find what I'm looking for in the documentation and books with a minimum for fuss.

The next month or so goes for refining those skills, going into a bit more depth, and really digging into Ruby, I think. I need to get more than a passing acquaintance with the underlying language, and learn more Rails simply by using it more. I'll probably try to write an article or two as well - that's one of the best ways I know to develop my own understanding. Stay tuned.