Well I'm the only one in my local perlmongers group not learning or talking about Haskell for 1½ years now.

And so far I haven't seen anyone of them using it in any "useful" manner...

IMHO its not even a hype like Ruby, it's mostly only "chic".

I have the impression many communities are mostly positive about Haskell is due to the fact that subconsciously they don't consider it a serious threat.

No flame intended...

It can be quite an eye-opener to learn a functional language. On some universities the first language you learn is a functional language. When I started studying computer science I had never programmed before, so for me learning a functional language (Miranda in that case) was like doing mathematics on the computer. Seemed very natural (all the others having written programs in C already found Miranda really really strange... ;-)

IMHO its not even a hype like Ruby, it's mostly only "chic".

It *is* chic. I didn't suggest it because of this though, neither for its general usefulness (I don't want to open this box of worms), but because the OP expressed explicitly:

.... so that I can improve my overall programming language skill set

I could equally well have proposed Prolog, BCPL or Scheme....
-- 
Ronald Fischer <ynnor@mm.st>

Sorry I didn't intend to criticize you, it's only my personal impression after a long indoctrination...

Me, I'm rather interested to realize different paradigms in Perl, maybe by extending the language.

(even if it provokes the resistance of local clerics... ;)

Cheers Rolf