[daviddaviddavid]

I can sympathize with this perspective. One strategy that I try to employ is to find books which are both small and good. In the case of Prolog, Clocksin and Mellish's "Programming in Prolog" falls in that category. The Art of Prolog is a great book but it's a big book and you could probably spin your wheels on it for years, whereas a smaller book can conceivably be digested even if you have a crazy day job and kids and non-programming hobbies, etc.

Regarding just how it might make one a better programmer (while intentionally not answering anything about how it can "materially progress" one's career), I think that learning Prolog can make one a better problem solver because it forces you to specify the solutions to problems in terms of their truth conditions. This, in turn, makes you more likely to tackle problems by constructing mini proofs. I find this to be valuable no matter the language or language family I happen to be working in and it's a habit I definitely learned from writing Prolog.