man you're far away to be a good programmer..you first need learn how thinking and how convert your ideas to code and then you can learn the simple stuff (open files, search through regexps) I learned first ruby, python and javascript and know I'm learnig haskell and clojure...learning any functional language is very different to the rest...you need how think and how express it in a functional way...that's the hard part..but when you learn this then write ANY code is so simple, elegant and expressive...4clojure and functional lang don't intend teach you how program: they intend you learn how think in a different way than let you write faster, elegant and explicit code (you can resolve any problem in 4clojure using your knwledge in javascript or python and writing the code using procedural algorithms, but you will notice than thats way is ugly, more verbose and less clear

"Do you seriously expect me or any other serious programmer in a business environment sorting a million integers in a million different ways?" well...Yes!!...today almost any app need than you work with thousand data...unless your goal be write javascript widgets or client side apps..you will need know how work with big data, how transform this and analize it...

I work with ruby, javascript (and coffeescript) and now I'm using clojure and haskell..and now I'm impressed how I can write many things than in imperative or procedural langs could take many lines in functional langs it takes me 2 or 3 lines..and they are very clear and self explicit