I'm just about to pass my one-year mark as a software developer with Amazon, at Lab126 in Sunnyvale, California. I have never seen any restroom behavior like the sort this article described, either here or during my visits to the offices in Seattle. Where I come from, males don't speak in the restroom beyond a quick greeting. If someone did try to bring up business while I was in a stall, I hope I would politely suggest he continue the discussion at a more appropriate time (as opposed to me getting angry and saying something very rude and inappropriate).
I've also never seen a software developer bring his laptop into the toilet, but then I'll grant you that I'm focused on minding my own business when I'm in the restroom. In general, though, this seems a lot more like a place we go in order to take a break from work, rather than a place to catch up on it.
While I echo and amplify the disdain that Ronacher had for the code he cited in his article, I note that sarcasm doesn't work well online. There is of course nothing "cute" or "clever" about the sort of coding he showed. It is obviously very ugly and foolish, and I would've preferred the author be a bit more direct about this.
I think I'm sensitive to the inappropriateness of the words "cute" and "clever" regarding so much Javascript in the wild because of the decades I spent writing C++ in production environments. While I plodded through my share of big balls of mud, the ideal was always to produce code that was clear, maintainable, and extensible. Always think about the next coder down the line to look at your work, because that coder may be you; in six months time, what you wrote today may be almost completely unfamiliar to you.
I'm not seeing much of that sentiment in Javascript now. For the most part it seems to be written by a series of lone cowboys -- or rather, "ninja" -- who haven't considered that someone may one day need to do something else with their code.
Sometimes this is the result of laziness and amateurism, but I suspect that occasionally there are Javascript developers whose work truly qualifies as "cute" and "clever," or perhaps "too cute" and "too clever."
For instance, while I have a great deal of respect for John Resig of JQuery fame, I was mildly horrified by his book "Secrets of the Javascript Ninja." His code examples were undeniably clever, and demonstrated the profound understanding of Javascript that you'd expect. They would, however, often render production code nearly undecipherable and extremely difficult to debug at the very least. And of course there were always simpler, clearer ways to accomplish what he had done with "ninja" tricks.
So, to summarize, this article really just seemed to demonstrate ugly, foolish Javascript, whereas too cute, too clever Javascript is indeed a serious hazard.
Forgive the trivial comment, but did anyone else think of the recent controversy about the cleanliness and quality of the Soylent facilities when they read this article?
I've also never seen a software developer bring his laptop into the toilet, but then I'll grant you that I'm focused on minding my own business when I'm in the restroom. In general, though, this seems a lot more like a place we go in order to take a break from work, rather than a place to catch up on it.