Ultimately everything is an abstraction, even the "little heads reading off the hard disk." People solve problems by framing them in convenient abstractions, of

Ultimately everything is an abstraction, even the "little heads reading off the hard disk." People solve problems by framing them in convenient abstractions, often switching fluidly between abstractions as it's useful. Natural language reflects this through metaphor and analogy. Andrey is arguing that programmers should take advantage of this technique as much as they can. So they shouldn't use abstractions that prevent the use of other abstractions. As an example, consider the paragraph above and some of the abstractions used: framing - comes from picture framing; bounding a view fluidly - meaning "like a fluid" reflects - reals truth like a mirror If I were barred from using abstractions from art, physics, and everyday objects, it would have been harder for me to explain a computer programming concept.