I don't think this commentary is really fair. It's also insular and bad for the reputation of the Haskell community. There are enough barriers to exploring FP and Haskell already. The purpose of the article was to encourage people to start taking baby steps toward FP, not to demonstrate a deep mastery of the subject.
I feel (maybe others agree) delighted that someone so widely read begins to extoll the virtues of functional programming. I also feel (maybe others also agree) disappointed that this, and other such articles, fail to take the subject far enough, really showing what better programming languages can do. I supposed I should be happy; the long road to FP has to start somewhere, hopefully others will start down that road sooner rather than later. Jared.