[friendly_chap]

It takes practice to be as fluent in FP as in imperative programming. When I've got the basics I still couldn't perform as quickly in Haskell as in other languages. Took me at least a year to become quick and apart from the weak library support (most things are a bit over the top for the beginners), I find Haskell amazingly productive. It's not _that_ different after you get used to it. Not having to write an other for loop ever again in a language which does't support generics alone worths it.

The language itself if you don't venture too far into the depths of the latest research is quite comfortable and clean. The fact that I can express my thoughts effortlessly in a few keystrokes and that the types (ADT, generics, typeclasses) are so descriptive makes it my favourite language for day to day tasks.

At least for the time being... until a dependently typed language becomes usable.