> It has to be dark, because too much light will destroy the negatives.

The author of this piece doesn’t seem to understand the process either. The light will expose the photographic paper, which will render it useless. The developed negative film is relatively safe from light-induced damage.

The author also fails to mention that one begins developing film (at least, the way I did it years ago) by transferring it to a lightproof container in a completely black room. They tend to not show this part in Hollywood, I suppose, since black rooms don’t really translate well to the screen. (Unless there is an alternative process I’m unaware of... I was very much a noob B&W photographer.)