These days I'm getting seriously into functional programming.
While I'm really excited about Haskell and the possibilities it seems to offer, I can also see now that it is going to take me a while to learn. In an SO question on How to learn Haskell an answer states that it'll take months if not years to actually "master" it.
Now, I know C, PHP, some object oriented stuff, etc. And having been told that Haskell isn't much used out there in "the real world", will I be better off improving my skills in the regular languages I know? Is Haskell worth the struggle?
In this question on Why people think functional programming will catch on the conclusion seems to be that functional programming will "catch on". But surely procedural programming will stay on top, right?
EDIT: keparo nicely clarifies my question to: As opposed to procedural languages, will it be valuable for me to study Haskell and functional programming paradigms?
Haskell isn't as hard as people like to make out to learn. Haskell opens up a new world that you never knew existed for you. It's as valuable to learn as any other language. You might not find a job requiring you to do Haskell programming, but does that really mean a language isn't valuable?
Haskell will teach you a lot of new stuff, and it will show you how to program even better in the languages you /do/ work with. You can do your own personal projects in your spare time with it.
Haskell isn't really used much in the "real world" if you define "real world" as "cash generator". So if that is your objective, then you might have to rethink objectives :p
Also, I don't really like that part of chosen "how to learn haskell" answer. It takes months to years to master any language, not just Haskell. Depending on how you define "master". I can use Haskell to a pretty good degree of efficiency and I've only been learning it for a month, and I've been taking it slow even.