TIL. Thanks for disabusing me of the notion that this is a good idea. I have seen it used in numerous places which is what led me to assume it was the "right" way.
I assume, then, that the developers of this site could have used pushState() instead of the hash? I mean, I assume that Backbone encourages this style if the developer makes use of it.
Backbone encourages pushState() if you can swing it -- you'll need to implement every client-side route as a server-side page as well ... so it's not possible if you're hosted in an inflexible environment. Backbone falls back to hashes for browsers that don't support the API, and transparently converts URLs between the two.
But regular hashes ("#") are fine for internal single-page-apps that don't need google indexing -- of which the majority of Backbone projects probably are.
It's just the hashbang "#!" that's a particular pet peeve of mine ;)
I assume, then, that the developers of this site could have used pushState() instead of the hash? I mean, I assume that Backbone encourages this style if the developer makes use of it.