Helpful to know if it runs at all though eh?

Indeed

.
Hm so if that took you 10-20 hours using ES but you think it'd take you 30-40 hours with ordinary paradigm-free programming... well, something's up there. Using my long-trained eye for designs of this nature it looks like about 10-20 hours or so to get what you've got there working using my usual ways... so what gives?
Yes. It's a personal problem

. It only really comes up on solo projects, but it's crippling.
I'm extremely fast at fixing broken code, and very good at finding clever, short, fast solutions to difficult problems.
I'm good at design, but I typically have to try something three different ways, throw them away quickly, and then settle on a fourth way that's great.
If it takes more than "minutes" to re-write my game, then I lose the thread of the design I was doing, and it takes me hours to get back on track. I can't do design if every design decision takes hours or days to try-out; I need to be trying multiple things in a single day.
With an ES, no design-change takes more than "minutes" to implement and test *in the game*. Scripting languages used to help me a little - but a lot of the design changes I make require small changes to low-level systems - e.g. the renderer.
(for instance: changing the visual style. Makes a huge difference to the feel of the game, but it always ends up needing at least one change to your rendering)