Let me add that lenses are not just a Haskell thing. It's a simple (and beautiful IMHO) concept from functional programming that can be introduced in many languages. Also, you can have lenses without the cryptic operators.
The cryptic operators are by far the worst thing about learning the basics of Haskell.
The language is already hard to learn because of all the wonderful and mindblowing concepts but the syntax is super frustrating and takes the difficulty to another level.
