[yawaramin]

I'm pretty confident we will find a fairly direct correlation between how mainstream the language has become and how much money was poured into its development (i.e. headcount of engineers working on the project and their salary levels).

Now I know correlation does not equal causation. But you have to think it must have some effect when Google is paying its Distinguished Engineers--the likes of Rob Pike, Ken Thompson--plus at least several more engineers, project managers, and others. All to work on Go. Can you imagine what the OCaml ecosystem could do with that kind of money and dedicated engineering talent? Heck, any technology for that matter.