After my brief time in Java, I instinctively agree with the OP...but I wonder if there's a happy middle ground here, such as just using the out-of-the-box parts of OOP?

The easiest example I can think of is: using Ruby without getting into how to define/redefine classes or methods. Just stick to instantiating simple data types and invoking their methods:

     my_string = "Hello world"
     puts my_string.upcase
     # => "HELLO WORLD"
     puts my_string
     # => "Hello world"

Among the first roadblocks beginners seem to have is grokking that `my_string` isn't modified...but isn't that an early point of confusion for functional programming too, to some degree?