Yes, quality is what the earlier commenter is talking about. Yes, idiomatic code is often considered to be what makes code high quality because idiomatic code is believed to make it easier to reach correctness (easier to read, easier to reason about, easier to test, etc.) than if you have to work with "spaghetti", which is considered low quality because it makes it much harder to ensure the code is correct. Quality exists on a gradient. There exists a full spectrum between a complete spaghetti monster mess and perfect architected idiomatic code. This we both read the same way it seems.
Whereas the article is about correctness. The program is either correct or not. Distance was used in the article to share how far away a given program was from being correct. But distance and quality not the same. This is a completely different way to look at software as compared to the topic of quality, as we already established at the beginning of our discussion.
We mostly avoid writing assembly because it isn't portable. So-called "portable assembler" is still very popular. One of the most used languages out there. That has little to do with the quality of codebase, though. Focus, my man.