Makes no sense to me. Never did. The speed which the code can be understood says much more about the writer than the reader. I have business analysts, project managers, and users that can read and understand my code. Do you really think that's a valid test of "programming ability"? Also, consider: 1. 30 pages of well written code != 30 pages of poorly written code 2. 30 pages of well documented code != 30 pages of po…
It is clear that well written, well documented code is easier to read than poorly written, poorly documented code. But, for the purposes of Bill's argument, we can assume the code in question is of average quality.
We know enough of Bill's 1986 context to assume that the code he is referring to would be C++ or Assembler. (Included in the book are some pages of the 8080 code for BASIC, written by Bill.) Naturally, the number of pages would vary for different languages, but the argument can be adjusted accordingly.
Finally: building code that satisfies requirements and works perfectly is a noble goal. The question is: is there any test than can be given quickly that acts as decent predictor for this ability? I think Bill's test is not too bad in this regard.