I think we can all agree that actively re-purposing the postfix-- operator to perform a dereference on a smart is definitely not idiomatic. Idiomatic might be

I think we can all agree that actively re-purposing the postfix-- operator to perform a dereference on a smart is definitely not idiomatic. Idiomatic might be fuzzy, but it definitely does not include active attempts obfuscation, malice or jokes. The code in the article could be any of these depending on context.