I'd even venture to say that if your modeling app of choice can't do this in circa 30 secs then have a serious consideration about it.

LOL!  Whenever we hear someone ask, "what modelling software is best?" or "which software should I learn?", we should just point them to this tutorial, and tell them any software in which you can model this shape in around 30 seconds.  Seriously though, I think this does make a good baseline for evaluating the efficiency of a modelling software's tools.  Think about it.  It uses all very common, readily-available features that any modelling software should have available.  Personally, i'd like to see this tutorial done in other software too, like Hexagon or Silo.  I think it could be done in 30 secs or less in Silo, but I wonder about Hexagon.  Heck, I wonder if C4D or Maya could do it as quickly?  Would be interesting to find out.  I think I still have a copy of Hexagon 2 installed on my other system, so I might fire it up and try it out.
So far, I did the tut in 3dsmax and Blender.  I found the Max version to be a little faster, only because when you first make the cube, you can define the number of cuts right in the primitve, so you save a few seconds applying the subdivide, and also the select similar works for those middle faces, so that saves another 3 or 4 clicks (seconds).  So it's only a matter of seconds difference between the two.

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Tools :  3dsmax 2015, Daz Studio 4.6, PoserPro 2012, Blender v2.74

System: Pentium QuadCore i7, under Win 8, GeForce GTX 780 / 2GB GPU.