I disagree, for the most part. I think that in most large development shops, more time is spent reading code than writing code (think of the number of minutes

I disagree, for the most part. I think that in most large development shops, more time is spent reading code than writing code (think of the number of minutes each day spent actually typing versus those spent looking at the monitor) and that being able to clearly comprehend what has been written is extremely important. . 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.