Paddy McCarthy but any fool can code. At least if we take the etymology of the word since fools don't have to be dumb. And maybe it's because I'm not an native english speaker I perceive the word differently since I have to look them up and not use them from childhood in my cultural context.
In my culture we have a very famous fool (till eulenspiegel) who is famous for his wit.
But back to the general ability: if we take developers.google.com/blockly I think any fool can drag those blocks and write a program with it.
The quote is an attack towards our own arrogance within our elitism. At least to me the point of the first part is to make us realize that we are the fools, if we don't write readable code. we're not special because we can write code.
It's not directed towards the general ability of a person or their interest.
We can deconstruct this quote on many levels .... the question is why? does it not transport the general meaning of its intention? or are we just sensitive on certain word used based on our own cultural, social or personal perception?
I am way more concerned with the quote 'humans can understand' because that can mean so many things and it needs extra context ... which humans? is it semantic? functional? syntactic? cultural? .... but that doesn't make the quote bad to me, it just means those parts confuse me and leave space for to many religious idioms of how people think humans should read :) ....
I personally understand your reasoning. I just have a different perspective, maybe it resonates with you.