Many people enjoy learning difficult things for the challenge of it, but no sane person enjoys using tools that remain difficult once understood. There are concepts in Haskell (and Lisp, ML, Smalltalk, etc...) that are considered difficult or confusing by the mainstream. They're also powerful, making it rewarding to learn them. Languages like C++ and Java are difficult simply because they're big and inconsistent - memorizing them is not very rewarding.
Some C++ wizards took Greenspun's 10th rule as a challenge and developed template metaprogramming libraries like Loki and Boost :P
Its kind of interesting to observe how C++ typelists do compile-time metaprogramming, they use a cons linked-list of types in templates. Its kind of sad to watch though because there's no REPL to set the cons free.
> Languages like C++ and Java are difficult simply because they're big and inconsistent - memorizing them is not very rewarding.
Your 'programming body memory' memorizes the language, and the mines, no biggie - you just program a certain way. What /sucks/ about C++ is the amount of boilerplate you have to write - in, probably, most interactions with the STL, and in class definitions, there's a thought-interfering degree of mandatory (or 'good style mandatory') boilerplate. At least 'for' loops will get cleaner with C++-0x.
Many people enjoy learning difficult things for the challenge of it, but no sane person enjoys using tools that remain difficult once understood. There are concepts in Haskell (and Lisp, ML, Smalltalk, etc...) that are considered difficult or confusing by the mainstream. They're also powerful, making it rewarding to learn them. Languages like C++ and Java are difficult simply because they're big and inconsistent - memorizing them is not very rewarding.