C is basically portable assembly so handwritten C can be as fast as the hardware can allow. High-level languages like Haskell can and do approach the performan

C is basically portable assembly so handwritten C can be as fast as the hardware can allow. High-level languages like Haskell can and do approach the performance of handwritten C if you encode enough information to get the optimizations for free: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/35027952/why-is-haskell-ghc-so-darn-fast https://stackoverflow.com/questions/35027952/why-is-haskell-...