Really, from what anecdotal evidence I've seen, the ability to deal with things abstractly is crucial. Moreover, it has seemed to me that the ability to maintai

Really, from what anecdotal evidence I've seen, the ability to deal with things abstractly is crucial. Moreover, it has seemed to me that the ability to maintain multiple abstractions and switch between them is also crucial. Note that this isn't "inconsistency" (to borrow the article's terminology), but rather an awareness of context. This is precisely why I find that the hardest programming language to learn is your second. To learn the first, you just memorize some arbitrary rules. To learn the second, you must develop abstractions for both, and realize how they differ.