I don't think Paul Graham ever said that unicode was not important. I bet he thinks it great. But, right now I think he thinks there are more productive (and more fun) ways to spend his development time. I bet he is right.
The annoying part is about the "complaining", as PG's followers are entitled to anything, just because they feel they are part of the cult.
Guess what? You don't get the right to complain. Nobody does. Nobody has paid a support contract for anyone to include Unicode support on the language.
The guy wrote a language for himself. Not for you, not for me. And he does not want to work on Unicode support. I bet he doesn't want to work on database abstraction. Or Ajax widgets. Or whatever.
If those are so important to you, go somewhere else. But please, stop complaining.
EDIT: bad wording. As bct put it, complain all you want, but don't feel in the right to demand anything.
At least in the US, that pesky first amendment does give them the right to complain. :) I certainly agree that pure complaining is annoying, but bring on the well-articulated critiques!
Also, I don't think that PG wrote Arc just for himself. I think he wrote the language that he himself wanted, but that's not the same thing. If Arc was only for him, then why release it to the world? I think what he wants is the best of both worlds -- lots of users, with no support burden. Eventually, the users won't stand for this, but while Arc is still an infant, it makes a lot of sense.
I think the argument can be summed up as follows:
pg - Arc is an exploratory language, meant to appeal to hackers so they can create great things with it.
various sw devs - But we need Unicode support and W3C compliance
How do these requests support the goals of Arc? I think it's funny that people have started complaining about these things (which aren't core to a language) instead of thinking about what kind of cool stuff they can build.
Why does a language that furthers the notion of software as art have to conform to existing conventions?
Just an observation: No one complains that Brainfuck lacks strings, and they have fun playing with that. Software doesn't have to be about building things that are useful in the everyday. I can think of plenty of programs to write that don't involve strings.
In fact, I can see one great use for Arc already: a more "hip and modern" language than Scheme that you can convince students to demand they be taught (instead of Blub.) I could envision a version of the SICP written for it by, say, _why.
I don't argue that lacking Unicode support makes the language more artistic. In fact, I don't even argue that Arc is artistic -- only that its author(s) didn't intend to adhere to any particular standards or tastes of our own age (which is what technicians might do), aiming instead to create a useful tool for "sketching out" computations (which is what artists might do). That all seems very clear from the statement on the Arc site.
I don't see how lacking it makes the language any more artistic.
Edit: and characterizing people as pedants for wanting a useful feature is silly and unproductive.