A programmer is born...

I'm about to respond to your questions as comments to the relevent post, but I wanted to write this observation as its own post:

I'm extremely encouraged by your questions. You're asking very detailed questions about subtle nuances of the language that many people would choose to gloss over. The fact that you are frustrated by this shows me:

1) Certification will not be a problem for you since you're hung up on the details.

2) You will most likely make an excellent programmer since programming is *all* about the details. It's the people who just get it to work (or not work), call it "close enough" and then walk away that are the ones to worry about.

I knew you were a smart and dedicated guy, but you really never know how someone will take to programming. Much of the question of your ability and attitude of whether this will work out or not has just been answered for me. The rest, as they say, is just details...