That's not exactly what he said was it, he was talking about the interplay you get with every one in the same room.
Ill give you an example I did a RAD (agile) project with one other developer back in the early web days two of us flew up to Edinburgh and given a clean room and with a co located team produced some thing that another group had quoted two years.
Netflix are not paying some one 500k to half arse JIRA tickets here.
I understand your example and there are definitely cases when working as a team in person makes you (much) more productive. However, Hastings went to the extreme. Especially for people who read headlines and article summaries, he sends a very clear message:
Ill give you an example I did a RAD (agile) project with one other developer back in the early web days two of us flew up to Edinburgh and given a clean room and with a co located team produced some thing that another group had quoted two years.
Netflix are not paying some one 500k to half arse JIRA tickets here.