Why functional programming? Functional programming maybe hard in the beginning but it's much simpler to program in once you wrap your head around it.

Backend web dev? There are lots of nice simple frameworks or you could build your own. Do you really need everything rails / django offers -- I find minimal and lightweight is best. You are essentially building an service that can interpret http.

Devices? If you want to do iOS or Android you can use javascript, css, and html instead of the native approach (see phonegap et al.). Javascript is a functional language -- in that it supports higher-order functions like scheme. (See http://yuilibrary.com/theater/douglas-crockford/crockonjs-3)

"...world of pain and waste of time experience..." or getting shit done in what I know how to do is not a good approach for a programmer.