For most people Haskell is the first introduction to some concepts (lazy eval, functional purity, etc.) that makes Haskell compelling in the first place. So as

For most people Haskell is the first introduction to some concepts (lazy eval, functional purity, etc.) that makes Haskell compelling in the first place. So as Haskell looks so foreign and they do not see the benefits they will reap, they do not even start. When learning Haskell you get rewarded as you progress but you have to work a little at the beginning (same with Common Lisp, at least for me.) At $WORK I used to show some cool stuff in another language and tell my coworkers it is built-in in Haskell (the concurrency stuff is what interested them.) I hope some of them will have a look at it in their spare time.