The previous posts may have given the impression that I'm learning various languages for the sake of higher academic enlightenment. Actually the core reason is much simpler: I've got some performance intensive code to write, python just didn't cut it, and in the computer language shootout benchmarks OCaml consistently kicks the collective butts of all the other popular language implementations I'm familiar with, including python, scheme, perl, ruby and java.

That's not a good enough reason on its own, but from first impressions Objective Caml appears to tick enough other boxes to be a real 'primary language' contender.