[chris-martin]

The code that the functional programmer produces is a more direct expression of the programmer's thoughts. The author thinks "I want to map this list using this transformation" (although perhaps not in those exact words). The author is never thinking "I want to create a new list, then for each index between zero inclusive and the list size exclusive, apply this transformation, append the result to the list I created, and then jump back to the call site providing that list as a return value." The imperative programmer is first thinking functionally and then translating that thought into procedures instead of directly writing expressions that match the thought (and like you said, it's just because they haven't learned the word "map" yet). Isn't that pretty much the definition of "unintuitive"? First thinking one thing, and then requiring conscious effort to think another thing instead?