>For example, it's hard to reconcile how the users of these functional languages can be so passionate about them, while non-users find them so perplexing. Why i

>For example, it's hard to reconcile how the users of these functional languages can be so passionate about them, while non-users find them so perplexing. Why is the gap between these two perspectives so large? My conclusion is that there are major, well-justified reasons for why people strongly dislike functional languages. The hypothesis I aim to test with a new programming language is: By making different tradeoffs, these issues can be mitigated and a more broadly-appealing functional language can be built. Maybe that is the case for Haskell. But I see F# as friendly, readable and easy to pick up by a beginner.