There's a lot of sunk cost in programming. How you think about problems and solutions. Learning new ways to think about abstraction and synthesis of a solution takes time.<p>I go to syntax very quickly as well. To a literate fp person the syntax makes sense. To a neophyte its deeply confusing. I've asked Haskell programmers to speak lines of Haskell and the visible effort they go to, to use English to speak the syntax distinct from articulate the abstractions (which may well be simpler) is immense.<p>The "can program in the imperative mode" thing is however important. You can. We should teach more people to do this.