No, he could not have (short of bootstraping a Lisp system from C++). I, for one, have much more C++ experience than Ocaml experience. I am far more efficient with Ocaml: typically, my Ocaml programs are 3 to 5 times shorter, takes half the time to program, and almost no time to debug.
I have 10 years of C++ experience, and 1 year of part-time Python experience. I needed to create a simple graph algorithm to find maximum Hamiltonian paths. It took me 1hr to get it running in Python and 6 hours to translate it to C++.
It is amazing how much Python (and other high level languages such as lisp, Ocaml) allow you to focus on the problem you are solving not the irrelevant details of the solution.
