I'm pretty sure they were all caricatures. The ascetic's code uses a Y-Combinator, which (as I learned earlier today on HN!) is overkill even if you program in a functional style (basically FP's answer to OO's AbstractSingletonBeanFactoryStrategy). The librarian's code isn't particularly bad, but if you've never heard of that function, you'll have to look it up. This makes the code a little less readable.

I think the point of the article isn't to compare these different styles, but to deliver a bigger message: Style isn't that important, just write code that works.