I think that when you look at things at a microscopic-level, everything looks boring and unoriginal. For example, every phenomenon on Earth (and beyond) is just

I think that when you look at things at a microscopic-level, everything looks boring and unoriginal. For example, every phenomenon on Earth (and beyond) is just an interaction between atoms. Looks pretty boring. As the OP mentioned, beauty is created by abstraction; an ability to look at the bigger picture and make sense of it. So I agree that abstraction is the most interesting thing in writing software.