You haven’t taken the time to understand it, therefore it must be useless. Others who practice it must be doing useless things. This seems like a common solipsi

You haven’t taken the time to understand it, therefore it must be useless. Others who practice it must be doing useless things. This seems like a common solipsism among software developers. The problem with your definition of abstraction is that you’re thinking of indirection. Abstractions in mathematics create precise definitions with provable laws. When you have a proof of a theorem you can ignore the details underneath and think in terms of the abstraction. I wouldn’t be so cavalier about dismissing category theory. It’s interesting for many reasons but it’s not here to serve you. You could find ways that it can improve your programs and how you think about them, as others have, or you can get on without it. And that’s fine too!