such a paradigm shift from the rest, and perhaps even from typical human-thought patterns For me, this is Haskell. Trying to write any decently large program

such a paradigm shift from the rest, and perhaps even from typical human-thought patterns For me, this is Haskell. Trying to write any decently large program (say, a Super Mario clone) causes brain hemorrhage. I've also met people who learned Haskell as a first programming language (common in UK unis). A lot of them wind up being crappy C++/Java/Python programmers, because they keep waving their arms and expecting magic to happen like it does in Haskell. Indeed, I learned Python and Haskell simultaneously during a seriously nerdy week (the gf. was away :) and my Python codes came out with a bloody lambda on every other line! Then I realized I was trying to re-implement laziness, but obviously Python lambdas are not lazy at all (that's right - stuff gets evaluated when you define the lambda).