> Haskell and OCaml are both great languages, but to a lot of people, they come off as much more "academic" or "ivory tower," and require a lot more effort to learn to use effectively for people who are not used to functional programming.

I think the problem is that people who are used to C++ and Python approach Haskell as if it were just another language, in that category of languages.

You need you learn some new stuff in order to really understand Haskell, but that's hardly a fault. I actually think non-programmers would have an easier time learning Haskell than experienced programmers. There really isn't anything inherently difficult in Haskell. It just requires a different approach.

It can be annoying to write Haskell programs sometimes, because it's so hard to get it to just compile. But that's the entire point: the fact that the compiler can do so much when we restrict ourselves to pure functions. It also forces us to figure out exactly what our program needs to do, before we can implement it, rather than build on top of proof-of-concepts, as is typical with Python.