Version incompatibility is a big problem for OCaml. Every time I try to use it seriously, the recommended tools never seem to work together on anything but the latest version. It's like Rust, but without the "young language" excuse. My impression is that INRIA is too eager to add features and tweak the language.
Next, everything builds so slowly, and just trying to set up Core, utop, and ocp_indent is a trial in patience, watching the same dep build again and again, confusion about OPAM switches.... nope nope. OCaml/OPAMs's got a distribution problem. They've pushed the complexity off to the end user and the experience is terrible. Jane Street planting their flag on the language and encouraging massive dependencies like Core, or shit like "corebuild" is even worse. I would never depend on anything OCaml-based on it unless it could be installed by my OS' package manager (Arch/AUR doesn't count, because it builds). That rules out most popular OCaml tooling, and ruins the development experience.
I'd prefer OCaml to Haskell, I find it more practical, but I feel much better depending on Haskell-based software, which generally "just works." As much as they're a wart, Haskell syntax extensions are a real benefit. You can build new fancy Haskell software with older GHC versions.
Next, everything builds so slowly, and just trying to set up Core, utop, and ocp_indent is a trial in patience, watching the same dep build again and again, confusion about OPAM switches.... nope nope. OCaml/OPAMs's got a distribution problem. They've pushed the complexity off to the end user and the experience is terrible. Jane Street planting their flag on the language and encouraging massive dependencies like Core, or shit like "corebuild" is even worse. I would never depend on anything OCaml-based on it unless it could be installed by my OS' package manager (Arch/AUR doesn't count, because it builds). That rules out most popular OCaml tooling, and ruins the development experience.
I'd prefer OCaml to Haskell, I find it more practical, but I feel much better depending on Haskell-based software, which generally "just works." As much as they're a wart, Haskell syntax extensions are a real benefit. You can build new fancy Haskell software with older GHC versions.