hi erik,
I highly appreciate your blog, so it hurts me a little but - I disagree:

> The only evidence to support this is the widespead usage of
> Java and C#, but I think that is a language choice rather than
> a conscious decision to use a language that runs on a VM.
>
> People chose Java and C# because they are preferable to
> fundamentally unsafe langauges like C and C++.

English is not my first language, maybe I misunderstand, but what
you're are saying here sound like a complete contradiction to me:
Like you say C and C++ are considered as 'unsafe' languages. But thats
because they offer features, that are not available when programming
for a vm. This has nothing to do with languages, it's a conscious
platform decision.

>> What if ocamlopt would be dropped for a faster ocaml vm?
>
> Why? Even if the Ocaml was able to target a faster VM, there
> are still many people who would chose to generate native
> binaries.

I'd call that a questionable decision. As far as I know, using native
binaries means to open a whole range of potentially uncorrectionable
problems with abi incomptabilities between libraries or with changes
of the underlying os.

As far as I know when you go native you always have to take abi
incompatibility and therefore recompilation into account. For business
apps, that's a showstopper.

> Erik (who uses Ocaml compiled to native binaries for mission
> critical code)

Would you mind to share some infos about your experiences, maybe on your blog?