I would go so far to say that any programming language is an abstraction over another language and/or hardware instructions. Also any API is an abstraction over

I would go so far to say that any programming language is an abstraction over another language and/or hardware instructions. Also any API is an abstraction over another API and/or hardware instructions. EDIT: I realized that technically my first statement is not correct: Any Turing complete language can be language can be compiled to any other Turning complete programming language. So it not an abstraction, but equivalent.