Users running noscript are typically prepared for any site to look broken or not work as expected. They also comprise a tiny majority of visitors, so for all practical intents and purposes accommodating their case is not really a development priority.
I understand your point of view. But you will agree that a CSS preprocessor in Javascript is a problem:
(1) It's useless. Just pre-process the style sheets statically. No need for PHP, Ruby or any server side dynamic scripting whatsoever. It's simpler, and yields less requirements for everyone.
(2) It exclude users. Not only the paranoid ones that run noscript and adBlock, but also the ones that just don't have Javascript like Dillo users. (Dillo is interesting for old, weak computers.) That's still a tiny minority, but they do exist.
Something useless that exclude users clearly isn't the best tool for the job. Unless punishing noscript users is a feature… Now, of course javascript is more capable than (pre-processed) CSS alone. But the article didn't seem to use those capabilities.
