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In my mind, abstraction is finding a single representation for various things that share traits. If those things happen to be chunks of code all performing the

In my mind, abstraction is finding a single representation for various things that share traits. If those things happen to be chunks of code all performing the same task in the same way, then factoring the code into a method would be an example of abstraction. I'm not sure that this definition conflicts with the idea of abstraction being about higher-orderness as another commenter suggests, but I don't think it does. I disagree with your claim that the 'bad' `average` method is an example of indirection rather than abstraction. Indirection, afaik, is about decoupling two things via an interface so that one isn't directly dependent on the implementation of the other. In this case you are still directly calling the method which will directly execute the code. Maybe the dispute here is around whether we should call these things 'the wrong abstraction' or 'a failed attempt at abstraction' but I think it's a spectrum where you can have a good abstraction but with some parts that don't really belong, and in that case it's still an abstraction.

daviddaviddavid 6y ago
Not the parent, but I think one of the main differences here is that your definition seems to imply that one abstracts from code where parent's definition seems to imply that one abstracts from the domain which one's computer program is modelling. I'd tend to think that the "chunks of code all performing the same task" aren't the thing you abstract from, rather they are just a poor abstraction of the same domain.
- jesseduffield 6y ago
  I agree with your distinction, however I'd say that it's abstraction all the way down: the code you write is an abstraction of the business requirements, which is itself an abstraction of the business domain, and when you're dealing with legacy code that nobody understands, it ends up being treated as a defacto domain unto itself. So I don't think the term 'abstraction' should only be reserved for use in reference to the domain because abstraction is already happening at every level anyway.

daviddaviddavid 6y ago

Not the parent, but I think one of the main differences here is that your definition seems to imply that one abstracts from code where parent's definition seems to imply that one abstracts from the domain which one's computer program is modelling. I'd tend to think that the "chunks of code all performing the same task" aren't the thing you abstract from, rather they are just a poor abstraction of the same domain.

jesseduffield 6y ago
I agree with your distinction, however I'd say that it's abstraction all the way down: the code you write is an abstraction of the business requirements, which is itself an abstraction of the business domain, and when you're dealing with legacy code that nobody understands, it ends up being treated as a defacto domain unto itself. So I don't think the term 'abstraction' should only be reserved for use in reference to the domain because abstraction is already happening at every level anyway.