[sjayasinghe]

It's more about familiarity with the abstractions provided by the language.

Sure, the complexity difference in operating a cart vs a car is not that big. But if someone has never seen a car or familiarized themselves with how to operate one then the perceived complexity is going to be enormous.

[scriptkiddy]

Arguably, A person who is familiar with the operation of a cart would be at least somewhat familiar with the operation of a car in that they both roll in a specific direction based on user input.

That said, the complexity of operation in a car arises from increasing the number of controls from 1 to, at minimum, 10. I would say the cart to car analogy is more akin to learning a complex API.

I would say that a better analogy for traditional languages vs. Haskell is that of a car to a fighter jet. The fighter jet is faster and really really good at certain things like movement on 2 planes and firing missiles. However, the fighter jet is orders of magnitude more difficult to operate and requires much more maintenance. For real world concerns such as getting groceries or transporting furniture, a car is the much more practical choice. I mean, we'd all love to own a fighter jet, but would any of us really have a use for it other than screwing around?