I'd contend that abstraction is perfectly fine, so long as it's an abstraction that people reading the code are likely to be familiar with. In Haskell, I'd pref

I'd contend that abstraction is perfectly fine, so long as it's an abstraction that people reading the code are likely to be familiar with. In Haskell, I'd prefer someone just use a monoid when appropriate, rather than reinventing the wheel. That said, you might want to avoid some of those Haskell niceties when writing Scala (as my co-workers keep reminding me) because those abstractions are less familiar in the Scala community. As always, the key is to tailor your message to your audience. That's just as true when writing code and choosing your abstractions.