I believe they do optimize for the simple cases, but just in very different ways. Haskell optimizes for composition, abstraction and expressiveness in a functi

I believe they do optimize for the simple cases, but just in very different ways. Haskell optimizes for composition, abstraction and expressiveness in a function-application sense. C optimizes for imperative loops, simple functions and controlling your memory layout and execution precisely [There is probably a better characterization of C, please comment]. I think there are plenty of tricks involved in writing performant C code that aren't obvious. Things like cache behavior, memory access patterns, etc. The job of the compiler and PL is to help us by making it unnecessary to worry about such things unless we really need to. It's a testament to the power of modern programming languages and computer speeds that there are many programmers who don't understand registers, caches, assembly, virtual memory, etc.