I am not sure to understand what this is this achieving compared to just assigning a ip + port per vm?
Not needing a different port. Middleboxes sometimes block ssh on nonstandard ports. Also, to preserve the alignment between the SSH hostname and the web service hostname, as though the user was accessing a single host at a single public address. Usability is key for them.
Using nonstandard ports would break the `ssh foo.exe.dev` pattern.
This could also have been solved by requiring users to customize their SSH config (coder does this once per machine, and it applies to all workspaces), but I guess the exe.dev guys are going for a "zero-config, works anywhere" experience.