There are several niches for ML-like languages on the .NET platform. In particular, ML-like languages are excellent for writing compilers and any large tools that process tree-structured data terms. They are also excellent for general data and systems programming tasks, and for writing libraries where the data model is not designed to be particularly extensible by the user.
The features of an ML-like language are strong static type checking, excellent type inference, lightweight and typesafe function types, safe and syntactically convenient discriminated unions. These langauges have a general simplicity that has inspired generations of researchers to use these languages as a starting point for other language research.
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