> I find it amusing that so-called "risk-averse" startup managers discount a 20-year old language with legendary stability in favour of relatively new languages.
While I mostly agree with your post, the four languages mentioned as opposed to OCaml in the grandparent post (Ruby, Python, Javascript, and Java) are all older than OCaml (which is 18 years old) -- Java, JavaScript, and Ruby are all 19 years old, and Python is 23 -- so they aren't "relatively new languages" compared to OCaml.
Yeah, although I guess it depends if you count Caml or not (1987). The intellectual history of the language can easily be traced back to 70s via the various LCF implementations, although the module system evolved significantly since then.
Either way, you're correct that all of these languages bear the proud scars of being tested for decades...
20 years for language X do not bring the same amount of benefits as 20 years for language Y, as can be clearly seen if we compare Javascript and OCaml.
Not sure which language looks better here... I'd say that even with its greater popularity, JavaScript is worse in pretty much every aspect than OCaml.
While I mostly agree with your post, the four languages mentioned as opposed to OCaml in the grandparent post (Ruby, Python, Javascript, and Java) are all older than OCaml (which is 18 years old) -- Java, JavaScript, and Ruby are all 19 years old, and Python is 23 -- so they aren't "relatively new languages" compared to OCaml.