I definitely agree with the premise of this post. For me the sweet spot of functional programming is learning the most important principles—quarantining mutable

I definitely agree with the premise of this post. For me the sweet spot of functional programming is learning the most important principles—quarantining mutable state and side effects, declarative data transformations, higher order functions, etc.—and then bringing these patterns back into more ‘practical’ languages. A good example is the immer.js library, which takes the pain out of immutability while retaining the most important benefits. Instead of bending over backwards to transform hierarchical data with lenses and the like, you just mutate a ‘draft’ copy imperatively within a bounded context. While it has its limits, it’s often much quicker to write and easier to understand than the equivalent ‘purely immutable’ approach without any real downside.