> It depends on how much math they have behind them.
Very much so, and also depends very much on the problem at hand. Yes, compilers and yet another RB-Tree implementation can be great in FP. Most real-world problems aren't that. In fact, most real world problems I have encountered (and see) tend to be massively about manipulating state. Often they do little else than shuffle data around.
I sometimes think "computers" are misnamed, because they do so little actual "computation". "Data around-shufflers" might be more appropriate.
No, there are plenty of people who will debate this, programming languages academics even. There is a vocal FP crowd that fawns over elegance, but there are plenty of other people who are more pragmatic about it.
> I sometimes wonder if the wins from FP languages are lost on the people not already scarred by the pitfalls of imperative programming.
Pity the poor programmers who get things done, write huge beautiful systems, all without worshiping lambdas? And by taking shortcuts ala side effects as a way to making things easier.
> Maybe someone uninitiated in programming won't have as many problems formulating functional solutions to problems in Haskell too.
It depends on how much math they have behind them. You take a mathemegician, sure, but a high schooler who is still having trouble with pre-calc?