I feel the concept of "leaky abstractions" is being abused way too much as an argument against all abstraction. Except in the well known cases, like trying to

I feel the concept of "leaky abstractions" is being abused way too much as an argument against all abstraction. Except in the well known cases, like trying to abstract away SQL to give it an OO interface, the leakiness of abstractions is rarely a big issue if those abstractions are decently designed. Not even beautiful and perfectly clean, just good enough for their purpose. Yeah, it sucks in those rare cases where the abstraction makes it hard to figure out what the hell is actually happening, but the extra effort is nothing compared to the amount of pain saved by having that abstraction throughout the rest of the development process. All plumbing will spring a leak some time (and sometimes with pretty costly consequences), but that in itself is no argument against plumbing.