So, then you're not familiar with C/C++, Java, C#, Pascal/Delphi, Ada - to say the least. Well, yes, strictly speaking you can do just about anything in just a

So, then you're not familiar with C/C++, Java, C#, Pascal/Delphi, Ada - to say the least. Well, yes, strictly speaking you can do just about anything in just about any Turing complete language if you work hard enough. However, expressing patterns like that with the powerful, general semantics and the elegant syntax of the Haskell version is not something that is offered by any of the other languages you mentioned. It was perhaps an unfortunate choice of example, because many languages do have first class support for some sort of array/list type and some sort of optional/nullable type and so might offer a reasonably tidy implementation of this specific case. However, in Haskell, the exact same technique would apply just as much to any choices of Functors. Indeed, you can often write generic algorithms that work with any choices of Functors (or Applicatives, Foldables, Monoids, etc, depending on what minimal functionality is required for your algorithm to make sense). Likewise, there are very many generic algorithms already available in libraries that can be used with both the standard instances of those typeclasses and new ones you write yourself. This is the big win for Haskell's type and typeclass system, or what the original author refers to as its emphasis on structure.