Is functional programming really worth it?
RiderOfGiraffes: One word: Blub.From PG's famous essay (even quoted on WikiPedia):  > ... when our hypothetical Blub programmer looks in the other
  > direction, up the power continuum, he doesn't realize he's
  > looking up.  What he sees are merely weird languages.  He
  > probably considers them about equivalent in power to Blub,
  > but with all this other hairy stuff thrown in as well.
  >
  > Blub is good enough for him, because he thinks in Blub.

The other point is that there are pure OO languages, pure functional languages, pure logic languages, pure imperative languages, and rarely is a problem easily and comfortably expressed entirely in one pure paradigm.But learning, properly learning a functional language gives you more experience, more ways of thinking, more techniques, more options.But remember:  "The dedicated real programmer can write
   ForTran programs in ANY language."

I've seen ForTran programs written in Haskell, believe it or not.  You need to learn not just the language syntax, but the underlying ideas and techniques.Then you can make the choice.