I fear you've missed the thrust of Rich's talk. Functional programming may seem "intricate" because it is unfamiliar, but if you're willing do do a little bit of up-front unlearning of the massively complex (but familiar) tools you're used to, you may find yourself able to work on projects of a much bigger scale and functionality.

See the slide at 17:20 -- easy stuff (perl,ruby, blurb) gives you 100% speed at the beginning of a project. If you don't expend effort into making things simple, you will "invariably slow down over the long haul."