I'm saying whats important is the quality of the resulting house (we maybe extending the metaphor too far here). If you can make a better/higher value/more usable house with an inflatable mallet then with a nail gun then yes that may be the right choice.
"But aren't some tools better at some things than others?"
Absolutely, and note I'm not taking shot at Lisp as a language. My argument is with the article, there is nothing here that supports his premise that Lisp is for entrepreneurs. That it was the right choice for a couple of cases? Sure! but for anyone starting a software business? nonsense.
Taking two examples of applications written in Lisp and trying to shoehorn a premise to it is ridiculous. Lisp/PHP/Perl/Ruby/Java are all tools. Anyone who tells you that one house is better than another because it was built with a different type of hammer would (and should) be laughed at.
Take this quote and substitute Ruby/Rails or Python/Django or even Java/Spring would give you the same answer and even have a larger base of developers to draw from.
"Our hypothesis was that if we wrote our software in Lisp, we'd be able to get features done faster than our competitors, and also to do things in our software that they couldn't do. And because Lisp was so high-level, we wouldn't need a big development team, so our costs would be lower. If this were so, we could offer a better product for less money, and still make a profit. We would end up getting all the users, and our competitors would get none, and eventually go out of business."
I think its always dangerous to make overarching statements that are meant encompass a whole category of applications. (this goes for multi-column keys too..)
I have found myself many times with my laptop in my car but unable to check my work's webmail to double check my calender because I'm offline.
Just to expand a bit I think its necessary for anyone building a webapp to look at how and why people need to access their app and develop accordingly.