[Cladode]

I understand the network effect, I understand that most decisions on PL are not based on technical reasons. Most non-experts mostly worry about syntax, as per P Wadler:

   "The simplest thing to do is a significant 
   change to the semantics. People won't argue 
   the way they do about syntax."

ML had GC, it would have been easy to add dynamic linking, and X Leroy made Ocaml fast, with a tiny fraction of the resources that have been poured into the JVM. Admittedly, this was a major breakthrough that was unexpected. I reckon the main problem was getting OO to work properly with generics: type inference becomes a problem and you have to worry about co/contravariance.

A Hejlsberg certainly wasn't on the ML train in the past. For a start he didn't think generics are a good idea (he told me personaly). Typescript shows that he changed his mind! Go explicitly rejected generics at the start, but Go-2 is scheduled to get them.

Module systems are not such a big deal in my exerience, I don't think ML's was a full success.