Re:but they're boring. (Score 1)

All languages have had their purpose, and quite often sucessfully implement that purpose. If you're only going to be writing AI or list processing programs, then McCarthy's LISP or a variant such as Scheme may be just the thing.

No one language is really suited to every single application, at least not easily. When learning at a University level, I found Ada to be exceptional. It is (fairly) strongly typed, provides support for data abstraction, object orientation, concurrency, and teaches good programming style as well as introducing all of the important features of imperative languages.
Would I write games in it? Hell no.
I'd obviously use C++ and DirectX these days. If I was writing distributed applications, I'd probably use Java.

Something like Haskell incorporates features for infinite lists, which is great if that's what you need. Although many of its language features evolved from Miranda.

My point is that there are languages that suit everyone. Functional languages are extremely inefficient when compared to imperative languages, and imperative languages can be fairly complex.

As for BASIC, well Kemeny and Kurtz managed to introduce time sharing and programming to the greater masses, at a time when programming was still a mystery to most.
It got me interested to pursue a career in IT, and I'm grateful for that. If I'd come across ML, Ada or Prolog when I was 5, I'd probably be in an entirely different career.

Each to their own.