You can get started with Clojure without Leiningen. You can get started with Scala without SBT. These are build tools for serious projects, with lots of options and lots of things they do for you. Some people recommend them to beginners and while that's not necessarily wise, it goes to show that they are mature and OK enough that some beginners cope with it.

Yes, you can get started easily with Haskell - but then Cabal is such a complete piece of shit that people felt the need for a Haskell distribution with batteries included. And it is my feeling that you're mixing the cause and the effect here.