Most of the (non-IO) runtime errors I get using Haskell software is due to head or fromJust, it's actually quite annoying.
Just singling this one out because I've heard it before. I've never gotten a runtime error from these. It seems quite easy to just not use these functions. It's already basically been said, but to add more personal experience: For the original blog post, I think the title is pretty easily falsifiable just from practical experience: haskell's Maybe *did* save me from NPEs and that's why I don't see them. The problem is not that a key lookup may fail in a map or whatever and now you have to propagate that Nothing, the problem is that they pop out of just about any code at just about any time and are not covered by the tests because you can't test all code in all ways, so production apps wind up crashing from them. That's the thing I see all the time in java, and don't see in haskell. And I don't think it's just redefining the problem either, I only rarely get "unexpected Lefts" once the app has gotten past the tests. So that's the practical result I actually care about.