My first reaction was similar to yours and tantarbobus's. I wasn't thinking along the lines of "a novice would have trouble grading themselves on this scale" but rather "a novice would have no motivation to do so."

It's not that I don't think the list is good - in fact, I think it is great - It's that one has to be burned by many of these things before they care about them.

Does it work? I'm trying to think honestly how vigorously I tested for and checked edge/corner cases for correctness before my programs blew up in my face a few times. The answer: Not very much.

Will I be able to read it later? Again, not something I cared about before I had to maintain my old code months and months later.

Maybe I am on the stubborn side of the scale, but I think most novices, especially in programming, are more task driven than quality driven. Maybe the shift towards thinking about these things, writing quality code today to save yourself tomorrow, is one of the big gulfs between novice and expert :).