> Having to use a syntax extension explicitly to forgo laziness feels like cheating to me... But then I have never used Haskell so perhaps that's actually norma

> Having to use a syntax extension explicitly to forgo laziness feels like cheating to me... But then I have never used Haskell so perhaps that's actually normal. The `seq` function achieves the same end and is in the standard library. There's nothing cheating about it. The bang patterns extension just provides some nicer syntax for it.