A super awesome type system is worthless without the basic requirements for scalable software development.
Ocaml is billed as the pragmatic ML, but the syntax really sucks and nominally typed structs aren't nearly as good. They also have 3 competing standard libraries.
Haskell is too ivory tower. Most devs simply can't be bothered.
StandardML is that awesome middle. The language choices are pragmatic compared to haskell (mutable refs, side effects, and not lazy). The syntax is super simple and consistent (unlike ocaml). The concurrent ML extensions offer good multi-threading (still waiting on ocaml). The mlton compiler is very fast. There's only one standard library and it's decent. The big thing holding the language back is third-party libraries. If Google threw their millions at SML instead of go, SML really would be better in every way.
OCaml structs are structurally typed.
> They also have 3 competing standard libraries.
There is only one standard library, stdlib.
F# seems to meet all of that except that native static compilation isn't the default (but is available).
Define sane syntax. C-like abomination? At least unlike C it's unambiguous.
Sure, I'm asking for actual traits, which makes something easily or hardly parsed. The only languages that I find more readable than OCaml are Ada, Pascal and SML. What causes mental overhead in OCaml/SML syntax for you?
Do you find
func test (f func(a int, b int) int, x int) int
val test : (int -> int -> int) -> int
1. Familiarity. Like (presumably) most programmers, I'm familiar with languages in the C syntax family. Of course you can protest that this is a subjective criteria, but little good that will do you as you try to convince your colleagues to adopt (what they perceive to be) your pointlessly cryptic language for the next project.
2. Visual structure is important and while OCaml's minimalism makes for elegant parser algorithms, it works against human psychology (or so I strongly suspect).
Look, I want to like OCaml/SML. I think the type system is a step in the right direction, but the type system is just gravy and the practical concerns--the fundamentals--are neglected (as much as you may protest to the contrary).