The way I see it, they try to separate the "pure" from the "imperative" world but the imperative world is like trying to write a completely different language.

Then they try to "make it easy" through some constructs like 'do' and >>= but it still feels like controlling an airplane using an Atari joystick.

In language and API design it seems it's very easy to shoot yourself in the foot and create problems that wouldn't exist in the first place had a more sensible approach been taken (which I agree it is hard sometimes).