> The gulf of abstraction between the physics and any programming language is vastly larger than differences between programming languages, so it's weird that a

> The gulf of abstraction between the physics and any programming language is vastly larger than differences between programming languages, so it's weird that all of the hardware and operating system and C+GC is the right abstraction, but "tiny" extensions, say, like hardware and operating system and C+GC+generics^ is not right. Yes! This is why I argue that the problem isn't "too much" or "excessive" abstraction. We're already so far down the rabbit hole of abstraction that another layer or two are peanuts to the amount of abstraction we implicitly accept as being totally normal, reasonable, and okay. The issue is bad abstractions. And we as an engineering discipline have lots of them, at all layers of the stack! I'll even happily entertain the notion that generics^ (to borrow your use) are a bad abstraction. I don't agree, but at that point I think we're at least debating something worthwhile — as long as the alternative isn't "no more abstractions", but is some other layer of abstraction that better approximates some high-level concept we want to model. Fighting against more abstractions is a losing proposition. We need to be focused on how to develop good abstractions, so we can progress the field on solid, stable ground instead of on the quicksand it feels like we've been progressing on for the past decade. In my opinion, Rust is a phenomenal leap forward here.