I had a similar experience with both Erlang and XSLT -- they don't look anything like a typical imperative language, so I wasn't tempted to think in imperative

I had a similar experience with both Erlang and XSLT -- they don't look anything like a typical imperative language, so I wasn't tempted to think in imperative terms. I just had to do things "the Erlang way" and "the (crazy) XLST way."