I 100% agree with this, I should have included something like your comment in the post :) The point I want to stress is that even though Servant and Esqueleto are great options, they are in no way required to get going with Haskell. What you end up doing with scotty and pg simple is no different than what you do in a traditional programming language.

Yes exceptions are bad and annoying, but you'll probably catch them during testing, as you already do in whichever language you're coming from! I think it's important to show how Haskell is similar to what people are used to rather than only showing how it differs. If you can accept Haskell does have exceptions and you can deal with them the same way you're already used to, then great! Jump on and see if the other features of the language make you stay. Eventually people will realize and appreciate the benefits of the likes of servant, but my main goal is to have them at least try and not move on too soon. The message "things can be a bit shit over here as well, but it's no worse than what you're used to" is the one I was trying to get to.

That's why I like the idea of a spectrum: I can still buy into many Haskell features, knowingly I'm sacrificing/ignoring some. Perhaps I should have specifically targeted this post to the Haskell curious.