Let me tell you that the issue is far more complex and far more nuanced than any of the comments here unveil.

For some background, read this perspective from the Native Hawaiian community (http://www.welivemana.com/articles/sacredness-mauna-kea-explained?hc_location=ufi) and then also read this history from Harvard (http://www.pluralism.org/reports/view/21).

Mauna Kea is a flashpoint for Native Hawaiians because, as the Harvard report notes "it is also one of the most sacred places in the universe for Native Hawaiian people." Imagine putting an oil refinery inside the Masjid al-Haram or cell tower anchored in the Western Wall.

Interesting raw data, but be very careful about drawing broad conclusions from this fascinating but highly-self-selected set of companies: the spreadsheet lists mostly companies that are relatively young and almost entirely Web-facing.

The world of software development extends far, far beyond work that is clustered at the edges of the Internet.

OMG, please tell me you are not old enough to vote too.

We study influential software for the same reason we study the past in any domain: to learn of the forces that shape what is, the human stories that lead to these artifacts, the design decisions and the lessons learned therein. What you see on your desktop today is the current end of a long chain of "obsolete software" that includes MacPaint, and Whirlwind, and any number of earlier systems that bring us to current dominant designs. Economically significant and useful software intensive systems all have such a legacy, and your hubris in so quickly dismissing the value of understanding anything older than your professional lifetime is staggeringly depressing to me. May you never be on any development team that has to grapple with the refactoring of legacy code.

BTW, the source for MacPaint is available online at the Computer History Museum:

http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/macpaint-and-quickdraw-source-code/

Just be clear, I'm not calling anyone stupid (remember what Clinton said? no no no, not "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." the other thing he said. about the economy.)

Two thoughts:

First, in a way, this is a silly discussion. Of course we need new languages. All interesting software-intensive systems are full of little languages (we just write them ourselves in other standard languages).

Second, it really isn't about the programming language. Yes, different languages make you think/act/work/abstract in fundamentally different ways, but ultimately it is the programming model of the surrounding libraries that has a greater impact on one's productivity.

I had the pleasure of conducting an oral history with the late John Backus. He reported that functional programming was a failure for the general case, for it was easy to do hard things but hard to do easy things.

I don't know what war you think functional programming is winning, but it only shows up on the minor sideline of the wars i'm engaged in.