Well, not entirely sure what the correct answer to that is. I've got a BS in CS and then 10 years of professional software development experience on top of that. But, as my initial post stated, I haven't really dealt with cryptography much at all so my actual relevant experience on that particular subject I'd still categorize as pretty basic. But I'd like to add it  my list of things I'm fairly knowledgeable about. So maybe the answer is both? I start with the primers and then move onto a textbook?