I'm assuming Gates is talking about a reading comprehension test. Like the ones grade school where you needed to read a paragraph and then determine the age of

I'm assuming Gates is talking about a reading comprehension test. Like the ones grade school where you needed to read a paragraph and then determine the age of Mount Rushmore. How someone did as part of the follow up (What did you think of the architecture? How would you implement feature X?) would be a pretty good gauge of their skill. Since they're discussing a real code base, it's harder to fake it for the guy who knows all the buzzwords and all that but can't deliver.