No matter how complete, precise and accurate an abstract description is, I don't understand something until I see examples. I believe this is why spreadsheets

No matter how complete, precise and accurate an abstract description is, I don't understand something until I see examples. I believe this is why spreadsheets are so popular: you're never working with abstraction alone. It's always incarnated in an example. That seems to fit how most people's minds work. By contrast, tools that require users to specify their abstractions first and only then instantiate them with data have a much more limited appeal. It can be hard for programmers to appreciate this because we're on such familiar terms with abstraction.