You guys sound like a bunch of Biblical scholars trying to interpret the word of God. "What did PG (Jesus) mean when he said X??" Focus on building your application and not holding to every word of your false idol.
I never said functional programming was useless. I said there were a lot of posers, thats all. If they weren't posers they'd spend the time building libraries - for example there would be a Lisp on Rails.
Dude you potentially miss a lot of opportunities when you filter on the basis of having a cofounder. PG claims a startup is too much work for one person. duh. Thats why you hire employees.
The "Screw YC" attitude can actually be healthy. You will spend less time thinking, wondering about YC and trying to impress YC and more time on building an actual product.
This is especially true if you arnt building some lame YC-approved social networking app that no one will ever use. If you are truly buidling something people want, you already have the greatest asset.
Why do you guys insist on a cofounder. Harj, you of all people should know that alot of the coding work can be outsourced. A visionary sometimes doesnt like having an equal to deal with.
Look man, all Im saying is what language you should use is matter of personal preference. If you prefer Windows to Unix or vice versa more power to you. Dont make people feel inferior just because you like one tool better than what they use.
I think whats going on is pg is pissed someone ditched YC and made out better - "HOW DARE you leave YC and go on and make millions- while the rest of my flock struggles on ramen noodles and my outworn cliches!!!"
No functional programming is just something people pretend to like to make themselves feel smarter than others. Notice there are no libraries for functional languages - there is a reason.
Also, pg and his "blub language" argument is lame. All languages that are Turing complete are equivalent. Everything else is syntactic sugar. Pick what you like.
YC is so 1999. pg thinks he can replicate his success from before dot.com bubble burst. Really, of the startups hes funded, besides dropbox, who really needs that shit?