[Altenuvian]

adaption of ML style languages suffers from the unfamiliar syntax, the pretty steep learning curve for those trained in imperative dialects at 'java-school'.

at least when it comes to syntax mythryl might someday provide an option. its basically SML/NJ with a c-like syntax and multithreading support. still very much in development but looks promising: mythryl.org

that said Haskell certainly seems to be the winner of the current functional language trend.

[nnq]

I don't think people really care about syntax that much. OCaml, F#, Haskell all have similar looking syntax, Scalla has a particularly ugly one (maybe if it wasn't supposed to be C/Java-like it wouldn't have ended like this).

...the only times I heard people bitching about syntax to the point of staying away from a language for it was either about Lisps ("undistinquishable paren soup") or about Python's significant indentation and lack of multiline lambada. MLs have a pretty familiar math-like syntax and apart from some operators seems "normal looking" even for Java and C programmers.