Hacker News Reader

Rather, an academia language.

Also, OCaml had trouble with multithreading for quite some time, which was a limiting factor for many applications.

Facebook made a large effort to thrust OCaml into the limelight, and even wrote a nice alternative frontend (Reason). Sadly, it did not stick.

View on HN

I had the impression that SML was more popular in academia, and OCaml in industry.

Old but funny comparison: http://adam.chlipala.net/mlcomp/

SML was a generation before ocaml. I would say the two languages from the same generation that competed for academia's mindshare were ocaml and Haskell.

Timeline-wise, sure, but I was referring to their present-day use.

If by "popular in industry" you mean a handful of companies use it, but has 1/100th the momentum and community and resources of Go or Rust, then yes.

I meant among ML-family languages.

> 1/100th the momentum and community and resources of Go or Rust

I think even 1/100 would be pretty generous.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com