> copying data needlessly and turning trivial stuff into a functional pipeline that is impossible to debug. You want your code to read top to bottom like the problem you're trying to solve, if at all possible. If your call stack looks like map, fold, reduce you've introduced a ton of complexity, and why exactly?

Hard to follow code is mostly a consequence of point-free style in Haskell which is an heresy to be avoided at all cost.

ML typically uses a piping operator to compose code instead and that leads to top to bottom code which is extremely easy to read.

There is zero difference then between a map and a loop. Loops are not read top down anyway nor are function calls. It seems to me you are just more used to these indirections than other ones and are therefor blind to them. This leads to an argument which I consider a straw man personally.