I would argue that for someone who never programmed functional programming will be much easier to learn.
Your statement is only correct for people who programmed for years in an imperative style and then tried to pick up FP, because at this point you have a lot of unlearning to do, and a lot of your know how becomes absolute, don't use variables, don't use loops, push your side effects out... and after all this unlearning you'll have to learn new concepts and abstractions like Monads and Applicative...
I would argue that for someone who never programmed functional programming will be much easier to learn.
Your statement is only correct for people who programmed for years in an imperative style and then tried to pick up FP, because at this point you have a lot of unlearning to do, and a lot of your know how becomes absolute, don't use variables, don't use loops, push your side effects out... and after all this unlearning you'll have to learn new concepts and abstractions like Monads and Applicative...