On one hand, I agree that there is something about the "biologically wired implicit grammar processor". I would view it more along the lines "if you state your

On one hand, I agree that there is something about the "biologically wired implicit grammar processor". I would view it more along the lines "if you state your problem in a way we are used to talk abou it, you will find your solution easier." I suspect this is the reason, why even my parents, that are mostly economists, like SQL whith its faux-english, but I wouldn't try to teach them relational algebra :-) On the other hand, I am not sure functional programming is so far out of bounds of normal people. Annecdotaly, when I was learning programming, in an after-school club, when ~12, I remember my teacher (a college student) complaining, how hard was it for me and other students to comprehend a statement like "i = i + 1". I think the language was Basic. I suspect that if we have been taught something more functional, we might not even encounter this :-) I am actually not sure why we had problems with this. Maybe because we already were solving equations in school, and "i = i + i" is looks like "0 = 1" nonsense. Maybe the self-reference tripped us up, and recursion would trip us the same or worse. Maybe the = sign was the problem, where it means sometimes equality check and sometimes value assignment.