&gt; because when you are reading you have to waste time thinking about why the programmer chose the set of features he did to write the code.<p>It seems to me that what Pike is getting at here is how easy it is to build mental models of the code, the language, the underlying system, down through all its layers, and, yes, the code&#x27;s original author and any subsequent authors.<p>I share your frustration at the subjectivity of readability claims.  There&#x27;s actually starting to be good academic research on code readability, for instance this paper:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cs.virginia.edu&#x2F;~weimer&#x2F;p&#x2F;weimer-tse2010-readability-preprint.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cs.virginia.edu&#x2F;~weimer&#x2F;p&#x2F;weimer-tse2010-readabi...</a>