[m-users.] Self-improvement subjects.

[Sean Charles (emacstheviking)]

What areas of maths / logic do I need to study to better understand the Mercury compiler?

I have a brain, so I have a chance.

What I find mostly confusing is all the talk of 'existential' things, from philosophy I know what Existentialism means but not when applied to a language like Mercury. Also I still struggle with modes/inst and 'and-or' trees. I read the Wikipedia page on those until it stopped making sense (didn't take long), I have rough idea of what the Mercury manual is trying to tell me but I am sick and tired of feeling like a semi-educated simpleton and need to up my game.

When I learned Prolog, I did some study about Horne clauses, and some other related subjects but only enough really to understand what I was doing at the time time, and it got me further down the road.

But...Mercury. What a beast!   I truly want to get to know it's inner dialogue as it once again is forced to eat my probably horrendous code over and over.

So... any topic for self-study would be most appreciated.