[noelwelsh]

I am very wary of arguments about simplicity, as what people usually mean by "simplicity" is "stuff I already know". Indeed I believe this is a large part of the reason for the popularity of Go: it is basically a statically typed and performant Python / Ruby. You don't need to learn much new to use it if you already know these languages.

The problem with this is how are we to advance if we never adopt new ideas?

Furthermore, I believe that the core of functional languages are very simple. Do you understand logical ands and ors? Then you understand algebraic data types. Do you understand high school algebra? Then you understand generics and higher kinds. It's all very simple but just maybe not stuff you're used to.