[grumpy-cowboy]

Why not? Not everything have to be dumb proof/easy. For example, Suckless softwares like DWM (https://dwm.suckless.org/). Extract:

"Because dwm is customized through editing its source code, it's pointless to make binary packages of it. This keeps its userbase small and elitist. No novices asking stupid questions."

Sometimes we need to have expert/power user's tools. It's not specific to IT jobs. You can see it in many other jobs.

[azinman2]

There’s a difference between powerful and accessible. I can build all kinds of crazy experience on an iPhone — but they also make the documentation available to me and attempt to pull developers in.

I understand that there are highly specialized environments/needs that are niche, but I would argue Haskell (along with most programming languages) isn’t one. It’s a programming language plain and simple. It doesn’t even have special neiche feature like Ada for proving correctness because this is going to power a fighter jet. It’s a language for CS nerds... that’s it AFAIK.

By valuing elitism, you largely are guaranteeing less positive impact on the world, as well as pushing away people who might come with ideas to improve the state of the art. You’re also letting less people experience the power and “purity” of a pure functional language, which dampens the impact those ideas can have on other developments.