agreed. ML [1] is short for meta langauge. Because it is not very C-like syntax by default, it can feel exotic and alien to most of today's unix graybeards, 90s enterprise, aughts startup folks, and even the JS crowd.
see also its 'newer incarnations' Scala, F#, Nemerle...(don't slay me)Rust(ish)
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ML_(programming_language)
