Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's an argument for clear code that's readily understandable by other people. It's not an argument for any particular technique for achieving that goal. I've never seen any programmer seriously suggest that code should be deliberately made difficult to understand.
Respectfully, commenting code and making it easily readable don't usually add to the bottom line. So while we all miss playing Pinball, it would be a waste of money to the shareholders. This game was another casualty of maximizing value towards shareholders and away from all other stakeholders.
There's some commonly repeated (and likely even true to some extent) that ~60-70% of the cost of a software system is in maintenance. Which to me, sounds like if you're the contractor providing the system, that means 60-70% of the value is in the maintenance. It does mean taking something of a hit upfront so make things maintainable, but with the right billing structure you can be adding to the profits by Doing It Right as you go. It's certainly still a gamble though; you might not get the maintenance contract. You might be billing hourly and thus don't see any extra cash for your timesavings (and indeed, might see less).