>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.
For a project of moderate-to-high complexity, the advantage I gain as a developer by using a more powerful, if more esoteric language, hugely outweighs the time I spend building tooling/libraries etc..
RoR et al might win out for low-complexity projects, but as the project grows the power of the language quickly eclipses the advantages of pre-existing libraries and easy-to-find "talent".
>You will always need exceptionally talented developers to work on your code base
You should strive to hire these people anyway!
This is another non-issue, if you're hiring The Right Way: hiring smart people. I just started a job writing Java having never written Java before in my life (coming from a background in Perl, JS & Erlang), and in a previous position picked up Erlang on-the-job. It's pretty much a non-issue if you hire talented engineers.
> Will OCaml help you get to market faster? I don't know.
They know, this article is basically them explaining that they feel ocaml gives them a competitive advantage. PG said the same thing about viaweb using Lisp vs. Perl/C+CGI
For a project of moderate-to-high complexity, the advantage I gain as a developer by using a more powerful, if more esoteric language, hugely outweighs the time I spend building tooling/libraries etc..
RoR et al might win out for low-complexity projects, but as the project grows the power of the language quickly eclipses the advantages of pre-existing libraries and easy-to-find "talent".
>You will always need exceptionally talented developers to work on your code base
You should strive to hire these people anyway!
This is another non-issue, if you're hiring The Right Way: hiring smart people. I just started a job writing Java having never written Java before in my life (coming from a background in Perl, JS & Erlang), and in a previous position picked up Erlang on-the-job. It's pretty much a non-issue if you hire talented engineers.
Basho's experience with Erlang illustrates these points well: http://basho.com/erlang-at-basho-five-years-later/
> Will OCaml help you get to market faster? I don't know.
They know, this article is basically them explaining that they feel ocaml gives them a competitive advantage. PG said the same thing about viaweb using Lisp vs. Perl/C+CGI