[Ferret7446]

> It's the best of all worlds (except for the learning curve, which is of course why it's considered "arcane")

Which is the most important one. "It's the best at everything except the thing that it needs to be good at, where it's one of the worst" is not a good marketing pitch.

[pmarreck]

Having surmounted (and benefited from) the learning curve of functional programming, I find your argument of "everything must be easy or it is by definition a failure" to be suspect, AND a cop-out.

Matrix algebra isn't easy either. Guess ML will never be a success! It's literally failing at the thing it needs to be good at!