To each its own I guess, but I wanted to say that I don't see "safety, type systems and homoiconicity" and other theoretical "geek" stuff as orthogonal to a programming language's ease of use, productivity and expressiveness. If anything they complement each other. The theory behind it provides a consistent framework so that you minimize the mixing of different paradigms and you can express ideas in a more consistent way. I very much doubt that a language where you just throw stuff in would be easy to use. If Julia is a great language is precisely because of all the thought that went into it, the ideas behind it didn't just materialize in someone's brain.
I don't think his point is that "safety, type systems and homoiconicity" don't matter. His point is that those things don't interest him as much as getting things done do.
Those things may help him get things done, but they're for other people to worry about while he works on his own stuff.
Also, am I the only one that doesn't know what 'orthogonal' means? I assume from the context it means that these things aren't mutually exclusive.
Orthogonal literally means "perpendiular" - it refers to two things that aren't related at all. So, non-mutually-exclusive is part of it, but not the whole picture.
