I see you want to push the example to its limit a bit. ^_^ Well, I assume this hypothetical language would be stocked with utilities that made up for what its pureness missed out on. How believable are these?
That's definitely what I meant, and I was going to just say so, but whan I saw the ":)" I realized akkartik probably knew that and meant something like "that may not be 'oh god' complicated, but it's still not nearly as convenient as the mutating code." I don't know if that's a correct interpretation, but it made it more interesting to respond. ^_^