Why We Use OCaml
> OCaml includes many features that are not available in the more mainstream programming languages ... and we believe this gives us a competitive advantage. ... The purpose of this post is to explain the benefits of OCaml and compare it to other languages. We hope to convince readers, especially other developers, to consider adopting OCaml for their projects as well.<p>The authors did a great job explaining the benefits of OCaml and why I as a developer should think about using the language. I actually want to play around with it now in a side project.<p>As a start-up manager though, I think the business case is strongly against them and don't believe there is any "competitive advantage" from using OCaml... in fact, I think the opposite. Here's why:<p>* There is not a strong community behind OCaml. You can't take advantage of the numerous libraries and references created by the community like you can with Ruby, Python, Javascript, Java, or any of the other mainstream languages.
* OCaml is hard (and so are most functional programming languages). You will always need exceptionally talented developers to work on your code base and that will get expensive.
* OCaml is not popular. You will have to pay an additional premium for OCaml developers due to the lack of experienced talent.
* OCaml is a risk. If you're starting a consumer-oriented service, you need to prove there is a market for it. Will OCaml help you get to market faster? I don't know. Will Ruby-on-Rails? Yes. I'd pick RoR any day just to eliminate the risk of getting to market late.