You are right that it can take a long time to learn Haskell. I've been learning it for probably six years now. At this point I can browse through most libraries

You are right that it can take a long time to learn Haskell. I've been learning it for probably six years now. At this point I can browse through most libraries on Hackage, read the types, and usually figure out how to use something. I'm still picking up bits and pieces of category theory to help use the more academic-minded libraries, but invariably I find that once I grasp a concept it seems like such a simple and elegant idea. It's just that the implementation and use take getting used to. Nowadays I think it's easier to do real-world stuff thanks to the amazing work by Michael Snoyman et al. on Stack, the curated package set and build tool, and other projects like Chris Allen and Julie Moronuki's haskellbook.com.