In my experience, for team of good programmers working hard on some problem/idea smoke breaks are incredibleproductivity boost. When we had actual office and were mostly working from there, even some non-smokers regularly accompanied us to smoke breaks because that was perfect opportunity for informal chat about work.

On the other hand I have seen teams that don't talk shop on smoke breaks. It seems to me that this can be effectively used as measure of team's proffesionality and motivation