"Thinking like a computer" would not involve abstraction. That would be thinking like a language author or a young programmer. "Thinking like a computer" mean

"Thinking like a computer" would not involve abstraction. That would be thinking like a language author or a young programmer. "Thinking like a computer" means thinking without abstraction. (Aside from symbols and maths.) By learning abstraction the student is only learning how a language author thinks, not a computer. There is no need to teach abstraction. It comes naturally. Humans do not operate like computers. Humans naturally gravtitate to using symbols. Why not teach how to convert from binary to hex to decimal and how to do binary addition? Every child has to memorize a decimal multiplication table at some stage of their education. They should be memorizing binary/hex tables too.