I've been comparing for fun different languages for speed in execution of the following program: for i from 1 to 1000000 sum the product i*(sqrt i) One of my implementations (not the only one) is constructing a list [1..1000000] and then folding with a specific funtion. The program works fine and fast in Haskell (even when using foldl and not foldl') but stack overflows in OCaml and F#. Here is the Haskell code: test = foldl (\ a b -> a + b * (sqrt b)) 0 create 0 = [] create n = n:(create (n-1)) main = print (test (create 1000000)) And here is the OCaml one: let test = List.fold_left (fun a b -> a +. (float_of_int b) *. (sqrt (float_of_int b))) 0. ;; let rec create = function | 0 -> [] | n -> n::(create (n-1)) ;; print_float (test (create 1000000));; Why does the OCaml/F# implementation stack overflows?