There are very good reasons for using Java: portability, libraries and the JVM's performance. But simplicity really isn't amongst them. Even Featherweight Java

There are very good reasons for using Java: portability, libraries and the JVM's performance. But simplicity really isn't amongst them. Even Featherweight Java (a carefully selected subset of Java for the purpose of proving theorems about it) is full of tricky details. That being said, yeah, Haskell's learning curve is quite steep, and writing high-performance code in it is kind of a black art.