That's funny because that's exactly how I felt about learning OCaml, except that I reverted to Python instead (and retrospectively wondered what the heck I was

That's funny because that's exactly how I felt about learning OCaml, except that I reverted to Python instead (and retrospectively wondered what the heck I was doing toying with such a mess.) You got to find a language you feel comfortable with and that gets stuff done without fussing around with basic stuff like core libs and tutorials. It's a shame developers of the core language don't get it and sabotage the adoption just for lack of craftsmanship. I am sure OCaml would have been fantastic for my use case (context free parsing) but I just gave up and went back to something that just plain worked.