[boskone]

Never could adapt to OCaml's undisciplined syntax. SML's is clean. MLTon is very nice with a couple of limitations, practical upper bound of program size and compilation times.

One of the co-authors, S. Weeks, was (is?) one of the core MLTon compiler developers. If feasible they certainly could have evolved the compiler and the SML language.

Somewhat interesting is F# lost out to Ocaml in a bakeoff.

In a way Jane St. has got themselves in a bit of a corner. I don't see how Ocaml is substantially less moribund then SML.

Here is an interesting thought to mull over. With the upcoming 2.8 Scala compiler _every_ substantive feature of (S/C)ML is available with equal or higher capability.

In other words, strike out use of objects in Scala and one is left with the most advanced (and active) MLs around. Hmm...

[gaius]

The revised syntax (camlp4) is much more regular, that's the only one I use.