Also, if one of those 2% have to write code understood by the other 48%, they probably shouldn't use a ton of anonymous functions (or generics, whatever they are).
It's ridiculous to complicate your code in an attempt to hit some moving target of "an ignorant person might be able to understand this." If a "bread-and-butter" programmer is using a modern language and doesn't understand functions, the correct response by everyone involved is for that programmer to spend some time understanding functions. I dare say the same is true for monads, although in many languages monads are hard to abstract out, and thus have less of an everyday value.
(Also, you mean "the other 98%".)
>2% have to write code understood by the other 48%
that would be the other 98% ;)
Note you did not say "already know", but "can actually figure out". I don't want to know what kind of software is being written by someone who, if they tried, could not actually figure out how to pass a lambda.