I agree with OP, not all languages are optimized for solving programming challenges (to be specific, recreational programming challenges) as they are optimized

I agree with OP, not all languages are optimized for solving programming challenges (to be specific, recreational programming challenges) as they are optimized around different goals. I tried solving AOC2020 as a means for learning golang. 6 challenges in, I gave up not because the challenges were hard but because it took longer to translate logic to code. It was no fun to write simple for loops, before getting into actual problem logic. Having to write a minInt function is like a distraction when you want to be focusing on the programming challenge. It is much simpler to use a programming language like Python that comes batteries included. In this regard, I suppose functional programming can be quite expressive. If you can break the problem into functional units, it can be a pleasure to solve programming challenges using FP.