I seriously view OCaml as a descendant of Pascal. If you look at some of its imperative syntax (for loops, while loops, mutable assignment), comments (* ... *),

I seriously view OCaml as a descendant of Pascal. If you look at some of its imperative syntax (for loops, while loops, mutable assignment), comments (* ... *), modular programming style (distinguishing interfaces and implementations), and fast compilation speed, it's clear that the OCaml engineers took a lot of Pascal's (and its descendant Modula-2) lessons to heart. At the same time, OCaml's ML heritage greatly simplifies the majority of the syntax (getting rid of semicolons, making identifiers case-sensitive), and bringing the expressive power of functional programming. It fuses together the best of both worlds. It's why I often say that OCaml is like a midpoint between Haskell and Go. The 'Go parts' are from their common ancestor, Pascal.