OCaml would be fine. It's a good language with a very efficient run-time. I'm arguing that you could throw out most of the advanced features and that would be

OCaml would be fine. It's a good language with a very efficient run-time. I'm arguing that you could throw out most of the advanced features and that would be enough for most people. Its best features are the core ones. That's why I don't really care which specific flavor of ML you pick. Any would be a big win over many languages in wide use today.