Unfortunately there is this alternative universe where languages like Lisp, and Smalltalk would have taken over mainstream, and by association languages like Standard ML.

I still fondly remember my introduction to ML ecosystem via Caml Light, OCaml was still Objective Caml, and Haskell was still getting beyond Miranda.

Instead as you well put it we keep we talking about faster horses, with the leading horse being C, and how to replace it by another one.

Or at least that was the path, until vibe coding became a thing, hopefully the bubble will burst.