I don't see why Haskell's in an awkward situation. Adding more strictness support to GHC is not particularly hard and it's happening already. It's far easier to

I don't see why Haskell's in an awkward situation. Adding more strictness support to GHC is not particularly hard and it's happening already. It's far easier to add strictness to GHC than to launch a competitor production-strength pure functional language. (On the long term, probably we'll see a brave new type-theoretical language, when much of the current research crystallizes into something tangible; but until then I don't see GHC being overshadowed by competitors. There is lots of inertia and the extant GHC infrastructure is extremely valuable. Dependent types are very important and adding them to GHC is very hard, but it's still happening, so Idris & co. will have a difficult time trying to fish in that pond)