[systems]

+10 for bad windows support, i think this is a key and weirdly underestimated reason

just to give an idea how bad, until recently, you could not just go to ocaml.org and download ocaml for windows, you had to either download one for mingw or wsl

so for many it was just not installable, i.e. for many we didnt have ocaml for windows, until very very recently

[thaumasiotes]

> just to give an idea how bad, until recently, you could not just go to ocaml.org and download ocaml for windows

On the other hand, you could get ocaml for Windows from Microsoft ever since 2005.

[int_19h]

F# is not "OCaml for Windows". Not even close.

[mbac32768]

The Windows support is bad because OCaml is a PL designed by people who are deep in Linux life. Windows is not something that keeps them up at night. (Which isn't to say they didn't try, just, you know, not as much as it takes)

One of the things people often neglect to mention in their love letters to the language (except for Anil Madhavapeddy) is that it actually feels UNIXy. It feels like home.

[obezyian]

> designed by people who are deep in Linux life.

> it actually feels UNIXy. It feels like home.

They use single dashes for long options.

This is not home.

https://linux.die.net/man/1/ocaml

[kragen]

Caml was developed in 01985, Linux was first released in 01991, and Caml was extended into OCaml in 01996. I don't think the developers were using Linux at the time; SunOS 4 would be my best guess. I didn't work on it, but I was in the sort of internetty environment that OCaml came from, and I was using Solaris at work and got my first Linux box at home. As another commenter mentioned, the command line follows Unix conventions rather than the Linux conventions from GNU.

[fithisux]

Opam on Windows is a masterpiece of engineering

[systems]

can you elaborate, or maybe share a blog post about it