wade has given an excellent reply already, but there are a couple of things I'd like to elaborate on.

2. Do you understand it? is in large part addressing cargo cult programming. Copying code is often a good way to get a job done and to learn along the way. It can also be a excellent way to pick up bad habits, lay nasty traps and generate incomprehensible code.

5. Does it strike a good balance between terseness and verbosity? I would expect to change over time in two ways:

As a project evolves cruft can generally be removed through refactoring. That most often reduces verbosity.

As programmers become more experienced they tend to learn programming styles that reduce verbosity.

The key element in this question however is the balance. Both extremes are bad. The balance may shift over time, but the question should prompt you to find a balance you are comfortable with.