Bert,
Many thanks for your prompt/vast reply! I think I know how busy you are, and this makes your reply even more the subject of my gratitude. I think you gave me some nice direction.
In the following few lines I will take advantage of the patience I saw you manifesting on different occasions on the forum. I will summarize the steps I think I understand would make a good logical progression in a Java programming/devel. career:
As I now understand, once I ((1)) finish going through HFJ, it is a good idea to ((2)) pick up the new 'K&B' on Java 5, in order to ((3)) pursue the SCJP certification (or could I just go for this without the 'K&B'? - probably not getting it is not a good idea if I want to do well, or is it?). Once that is done, ((4)) get the new HF OO (provide it is out on shelves), followed by ((5)) HF DP.
Now, if at this point I want to progress further, an excellent first step forward would be ((7)) the SCJD exam, prepared using ((6)) Mehran's book on it.
Two-three questions at this point, if I am not asking for too much:
1) Would HF DP be more useful once I went through SCJD, or the preparation for this second certification would make more sense once I understood Design Patterns first? [I guess one could say "for crying out loud, whether you read one first and the other one second, ... just read them!"]
2) I know the progression on Sun's site doesn't necessarily suggest this, but would a general developer's certification such as SCJD be a good (non-compulsory) prerequisite before moving toward SCBCD or SCWCD?
3) Is the order of things suggested above correct, or some corrections would be required for the 'best possible recipe' - I understood that a lot depends on personal or professional preference/requirements, but even so ... .
I hope (again) this questions will not be regarded as the epitome of dumb questions, but after struggling for months to find the right book for a beginner and following one wrong advice after the other, I just don't want to end up doing the same when it comes to following the right progression in this line of work.
Many thanks again for the time you spend answering this kind of questions!
Ty