Russelldb

I've been hacking away in Erlang for 2 years and thoroughly enjoy it. I'm a Java contractor by day and an Erlanger at night and the weekend (and days off, and lunch time). Having done this for two years my day job is dead to me. I want to work with functional languages.

However there are very few jobs for Erlang, and even fewer in the UK.

Is there a most-likely-to-get-me-employed functional language? Is Caml going to allow me to work in a functional language? Lisp? Thanks in advance.

(PS I have (and do) get to work with JavaScript and have enjoyed its functional nature, but the money: she was no good)

I've been working as a developer for years but all the interesting works seems to require a greater knowledge of computer science than I have. I'm self taught and I am always trying to keep learning.

Whenever I start reading a book about algorithms I get lost by the maths.

Maths seems to be built on top of maths so I wind back as far as I can and find that my maths education stops at arithmetic (for shame). I've tried using wikipedia whenever I get stuck but it seems to be a maze of interlinked concepts and I quickly get lost again with no solid underpinnings to depend on.

Is there a good book or online course you can recommend that can get me to the level needed to take a 1st year CS course? I'm not sure (a) what to learn and (b) in what order, so a list of the subjects to cover and an order that is logical would be enough for me to start learning.