> When I see an (admittedly admirably concise) Haskell program get ten times longer just to approach the speed of the most obvious expression in C++ or even C, it leaves me uninspired.
Well, if the most obvious expression in C++ or C was a hundred times longer then that's still a win for Haskell. Particularly when the performance-critical parts are usually a tiny fraction of any given program. Frankly I don't think the industry should even start worrying about performance yet though, given how much difficulty we still have with producing correct software.
I have not seen any example of a program that would be a hundred, or even ten, or five, times longer in C++.
Not worrying about performance is a luxury that those of us who face stringent requirements are often not afforded. My experience using the WWW indicates that many, many sites demonstrate their contempt for me (and you, if you could perceive that) by ignoring it.
When I see an (admittedly admirably concise) Haskell program get ten times longer just to approach the speed of the most obvious expression in C++ or even C, it leaves me uninspired.
I want a language where the cleaner the program is, the faster it is. It seems like only C++ is really even trying. (Rust might step up, once it matures. Or might not.) With Dennart Scaling wholly dead, and Moore's Law petering out, there will be lots of room for better ways to use lots of cores, GPU units, and FPGAs (with plenty of macro cells) reconfigured at runtime, to make better use of what logic we can fit. C++ is only taking baby steps into that brave new world, but I don't see anyone else doing even that much.
In the meantime, we have a bunch of cores to keep busy doing actually useful work, and decreasing room for actively wasteful languages.
Haskell has had plenty to teach us, but it will not be the language that flies.