Good post, sundialsvc4. I would characterize what your saying as granularity, modularity, and/or atomicity. Code is easier to understand when it is small (e.g. functions of 80 lines or less) and does not require knowledge of other parts of the system to understanding.

That said, while such granuarlity/modularity is important, it's only one factor in the list of things that I could consider in evaluating the goodness of code. There's also style, simplicity, artistry, suitability of the algorithm, etc.

Also, I would argue that "contains no assumptions" should be "contains no *unstated* assumptions".