By its very nature, abstraction separates the incidental from the fundamental (where "incidental" and "fundamental" are defined on a per-abstraction basis). If

By its very nature, abstraction separates the incidental from the fundamental (where "incidental" and "fundamental" are defined on a per-abstraction basis). If the problem you're trying to solve focuses on the fundamentals of the abstraction, you're most certainly gaining clarity (possibly at the expense of performance). If you find the abstraction's making you lose clarity, it might very well be that you're really working on incidental complexity, but there's also a distinct chance you just chose the wrong abstraction.