What does "serve the economy" mean? Sounds like some fascist slogan.

Probably why St. Paul used it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suffer_fools_gladly

There's a good explanation of its origins here: http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/5/messages/289.html

I tried DuckDuckGo recently, but the results SuckSuckNo.

As a Perl programmer, I find it strange to see someone arguing that Python has an English-like syntax. For one thing, I guess you've forgotten "def", "len", (for that matter, "print", "return", and "break" are a bit awkward on a natural English level, though obviously not specific to Python. "pass" what? "try"...."except" - so I should try everything except these ones? "while True" (with an unnatural capitalized "True") "yield" a....generator, mkay....). I find it strange because it's usually the opposite of what Python lovers argue. Compared to Perl, which Pythonistas generally abhor due to its complicated (natural!) syntax, Python is supposed to be a model of sterile cleanliness and simplicity -- which is about like trying to write poetry in Lojban.

Are we reading the same article? The one I see has nothing about venture capitalists, and says the execs departed. The summary seems like it was written by a paranoid schizophrenic after I read the article.

The mid 1990s also called, and they want their WebRing back.

or "alloc"

Your pay is inversely proportional to how much you work, so actual workers weren't wealth pumpees.

The desire to "improve" everything can also lead to a dystopia....

If you were solving a math problem, would you prefer to type it in, or to write it on a notepad? Do you think that a physicist would be more free to make abstractions by typing his solutions, or by scribbling on a chalkboard? Tapping 50 or so keys with 10 fingertips is surely not the most expressive interface there can be.

The primitive programming tools available make it too difficult to implement?

Bloatware. Surely, a real hacker would write a custom "browser" in assembly using syscalls directly.