Stronger means higher leverage for the typical programmer. Assembly language isn't very high leverage (I say that having written several games professionally in

Stronger means higher leverage for the typical programmer. Assembly language isn't very high leverage (I say that having written several games professionally in entirely assembly language). Assembly language also doesn't natively support either closures or objects, except in the sense that of course you can build them from first principles, Turing Completeness and all that. Until someone proves to me that Haskell can be used in a reasonable way by a "typical" programmer, I simply won't think about pure-functional when I make general statements about languages. I fully admit this may be a hole in my brain, but I don't understand how to break down the problems I face on a daily basis into Haskell (or any pure-functional language), so I just talk about the universe of languages that are not pure-functional. I've looked at Haskell tutorials and gotten at least hip deep into the language, by the way. I just usually end up dealing with problems that require levels of complexity where FP tools fall down. Your mileage may vary.