In the industry I work in --- computer software --- it is ludicrously hard to find people competant in C programming, and I'm inclined to ignore idiosyncratic spelling in source code.
It reminds me of people who say they would never hire a developer who doesn't write comments. Really? Writing comments is a precious skill that takes years to develop? You just tell someone, if you work here, you need to write comments. Problem solved in one sentence. Same with variable names. Its a standards issue, nothing more, nothing less.
The relevant chapters in Code Complete may help you understand how much more complicated the subject is than that. (It may also fix your apparent belief that comments are necessarily a good thing.)
In any case I don't care whether people can quote from Code Complete. What I care about is that they have good enough instincts that they can wind up writing reasonable code that I'd like to maintain. If you don't understand why people would want function names that describe what a function actually does, I don't want to maintain your code. Nor, in the long run, are you likely to be productive.
But it is a bar to meet, not a standard to judge by. Once you've met that bar, I don't care about the difference between OK, and best in the world. I'm on to caring about other things. Like productivity. Code quality and productivity isn't either/or. It is an and. (I've had to clean up enough after the super-productive producer of crap, and don't want to do it again.)
Take this scenario: You have a single position you are interviewing people for. You've got two candidates with entirely even qualifications. The only perceivable difference between them is that one of them writes interview code with variable names spelled like in the original post. The other guy spells things the way you would expect. I'm willing to bet you'd end up hiring the second guy. Sounds like an "autoding" to me. Or would you argue that you would not do that?
My point was, spelling in variable names is only a very minor factor when deciding on hiring or not hiring a candidate. If his reasoning and experience and work ethic etc. are all ok, spelling wouldn't make those factors irrelevant.
When a factor is automatically excluding, that means that no matter how good in other respects the candidate is, I still wouldn't hire him (for example someone with a swastika tattooed on his face applying for a customer-facing job). I never suggested any such a thing anywhere (and I don't think you're claiming I am). So I don't see how you're coming to the conclusion that I think that making spelling mistakes automatically excludes a candidate.
In reality, you never have two candidates who are absolutely equivalent except for spelling ability. The interview process is extremely high-error, brutally timeboxed, and infamously ineffective. The most important capability you need to assess is "ability to code". You know a priori you're going to do a crappy job assessing that capability.
Whether or not he thinks you should be wasting time on trivialities like variable name spelling (I myself would dodge this problem by using names like "x" and "cp" for utterly trivial, well-known example problems like this), I don't know. My bias is pretty clear.
Under that definition, I don't see any way to construe my earlier remarks as meaning that I would such a high importance on spelling of variable names.
I feel the same way.
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muphrys_Law