Ever heard of the Waterbed principle? Every problem has a baseline level of complexity beyond which it cannot be simplified further. Thus by simplifying one as

Ever heard of the Waterbed principle? Every problem has a baseline level of complexity beyond which it cannot be simplified further. Thus by simplifying one aspect of the system, you necessarily increase complexity in some other aspect. This shows in spades in Computer Science. At the end of the day, you have an address space. The things you can populate that address space with are either instructions or data. You are populating that address space with the right patterns to get useful value out of the underlying machine. Everything above that. Abstractions. Languages. Tooling. Mental models. Are best collected (in my opinion) as tools for a toolbox (filling out your workspace horizontally), but not piled up too high on top of each other. Once you start piling abstraction on abdtraction, it gets whack. Real fast.