No wonder OCaml compiled to native is faster than other MLs and Python. I rem stumbling on benchmarks elsewhere, where compiled OCaml rivaled CPP in terms of performance on certain tests.

In my experience with OCaml, I have found the syntax a bit too unfavourable like the author did, but the resulting code was very fast. With concurrency sorted out, I wonder if it could take on Rust, Nim, and Go as far as systems-programming is concerned (esp since Go has the weight of Google behind it).

It also helps that the language designers have written a large tutorial on systems programming: https://ocaml.github.io/ocamlunix/

Then there's this epic Mirage OS built with Cloud Computing in mind by Anil and his team of OCaml zealots: http://openmirage.org/