I’d argue that abstraction is cheap. You should do it more. As often as possible. Consider a world where the software industry state-of-the-art is completely n

I’d argue that abstraction is cheap. You should do it more. As often as possible. Consider a world where the software industry state-of-the-art is completely nascent and isolated to every owner of a computing system. You buy these huge refrigerator-sized machines and get a bunch of manuals with them but nothing else. You have no operating system. No compiler. Nothing. The expense for this project can only be funded by a large university or government. The timeline to deliver is measured in years. In todays world? We write programs that generate new programs, that emulate entire classes of machines, and we ship software projects in days, weeks, and months. It’s so vastly complex that it’s a wonder it works at all let alone so well. Abstraction is what makes it all work without toppling over when someone, somewhere in the stack, makes a slight change.