back in the day when i was "bootstrappping myself" i decided the answer was functional programming and compilers. i don't regret for a minute looking at both o

back in the day when i was "bootstrappping myself" i decided the answer was functional programming and compilers. i don't regret for a minute looking at both of those (i was a hipster haskell programmer - using it way before it was cool... ;o) these days functional programming is pretty much mainstream, but more declarative approaches are still quite obscure - i think learning a little prolog and datalog helped me better deal with sql, but i still don't feel comfortable with these topics so have recently been trying to understand more using stack overflow as motivation (latest attempt: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7076349/is-there-a-good-way-to-do-this-type-of-mining/7237972#7237972 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7076349/is-there-a-good-w...). i also feel i am slipping behind on distributed computing, so i guess i should be looking there next. (i only started using stack overflow "seriously" about a month ago and i think it's great for learning - you can treat questions at the edge of your expertise as homework, or just read other people's answers).