OCaml

Functional, imperative, object-oriented. First appeared 1996; ml and functional; compilers, verification, finance.

Record

First appeared1996
FamilyML and functional
Paradigm emphasisFunctional, imperative, object-oriented
TypingStatic, strong, inferred
MemoryGenerational GC
ExecutionAOT compiled or bytecode
Primary domainCompilers, verification, finance
DesignersINRIA
Referencehttps://ocaml.org/manual/
Last verifiednot yet checked against its source by a human

Dates are first public release or publication, not the start of internal development. Colour on the typing and memory tags encodes kind, never rank.

Back to top

Influence

Figure 1. OCaml in the influence graph: recorded ancestors on the left, languages that record it as an influence on the right. Every node links to its own record. Edges name indexed languages only, so an empty side means no indexed relative, not none at all. Source: languages.json.

Back to top

Within the ML and functional

Algebraic data types, exhaustive pattern matching, and inference-driven typing. The source of most type-system features adopted by mainstream languages since 2010.

Language First appeared Typing Memory Execution
ML 1973 Static, strong, inferred Tracing GC Compiled or interpreted
Erlang 1986 Dynamic, strong Per-process GC Bytecode VM (BEAM)
Haskell 1990 Static, strong, inferred Tracing GC AOT compiled
F# 2005 Static, strong, inferred Tracing GC (.NET) Bytecode + JIT
Elixir 2012 Dynamic, strong Per-process GC Bytecode VM (BEAM)
Gleam 2019 Static, strong, inferred Per-process GC Compiled to Erlang or JavaScript
Unison 2020 Static, strong, inferred Tracing GC Interpreted or compiled

7 other languages in this family, ordered by first appearance. OCaml itself is omitted. Source: languages.json.

Back to top