Go / Rust / Scala are the competition for OCaml, not Python. Around 2010 there weren't great options if you wanted a vaguely modern language in the server backend space. Java was stagnant and Scala was just getting going commercially. OCaml could have been in there.
Scala really had potential. But I really think they pushed away the average developer and with Scala 3 fractured their ecosystem even more. I personally wish the community had stayed true to the vision of fusing object and functional programming.
