APL was the first programming language I learned, I was obsessed with learning every intricacy of the language. I almost lost my mind when I had to switch to a procedural language. APL warped my mind in such a way that it took almost a month to feel comfortable using anything else.
Wow! I never thought of this perspective. For most people, procedural is the first concept. If they ever start looking at apl, I would wager that's much more tenable then what you had to do!
For comparison, I heard that people who start with functional programming find it quite intuitive. The hard part isn't learning a new paradigm, but "unlearning" the old one.
(Also I hear they're more than a bit sad about how crude procedural programming is! But unfortunately I came at it the other way around, so my standards are permanently lowered ;)