This is correct. Everyone I've met that insisted that functional programming is superior to imperative has been a big time math/CS nerd, the kind that goes to grad school and was confused when the iPad launched because hey it does nothing that a laptop doesn't already do!
My experience doing functional programming is that hurt my brain, it just doesn't map as cleanly to how I think of things happening compared to imperative programming. It was just really painful to code in, and most of my classmates had the same opinion.