I agree with Carmack's analysis of Lisp but don't think it really applies to OCaml, which I've used professionally. IMO, OCaml is significantly easier to ramp

I agree with Carmack's analysis of Lisp but don't think it really applies to OCaml, which I've used professionally. IMO, OCaml is significantly easier to ramp up on than Haskell. The object model and the fact that the language allows you to ramp up on imperative code let you write working code and the language is feature rich enough you're not generally writing a DSL. Granted, I think it is still harder to ramp up programmers than in JS, Python, Java, or Go. I think OCaml's biggest problem has been one of timing and value proposition. The language matured to some level of production readiness in the mid 2000s at which point multicore started to become important. If you wanted extreme performance, OCaml increasingly couldn't compete with C++ or Java. Most shops don't the robustness the superior type system could provide and the other downsides of an unpopular language always loomed large when adoption was being considered. I still think OCaml or something OCaml-like might become popular with time, but it will require the kind of improvements the multicore project is hinting at providing and more.