From a language standpoint, there are only a handful of features I would really like. * something like JS backtick interpolation. Strings are hugely important

From a language standpoint, there are only a handful of features I would really like. * something like JS backtick interpolation. Strings are hugely important in day-to-day coding for a lot of domains. Baked-in utf8 and Rune (utf32) would also be nice to have. * Leading pipe in cases and `| foo | bar => expr` (maybe guards too, but they can be subject to abuse) * Module Typeclasses which make it harder to create typeclasses everywhere like Haskell, but also does away with some ambiguities and the special case `eqtype` typeclass. SML has a way to add operators, but without typeclasses, it's pretty useless and unsafe. While we're improving modules, bake higher-order functors into them (they are already widely supported) * Bake Concurrent ML into the official spec As you can see, not too many things. In fact, about half of them (or more) are already supported in some SML implementations. Honestly, all the "new" syntax/features in languages like Java, Swift, or C# just seem like attempts to kluge them one step closer to SML.