While this is still amusing, and poignant, I don't believe the goal of the original link is to encourage people to try and compete with modern languages.
For those of us (like me) who learn best by trying things out, a PL project is a great way to wrap your head around some of the more abstract concepts of modern programming languages (like closures, as mentioned in the post).
For those of us (like me) who learn best by trying things out, a PL project is a great way to wrap your head around some of the more abstract concepts of modern programming languages (like closures, as mentioned in the post).
Still, +1 for amusement.