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It seems like almost everybody in these comments as well as OP are failing to differentiate between the narrow computer science / Dijkstra definition of abstraction versus how it's invoked colloquially, including in conversations of computer science such as here.

In that sense, we can correctly say that even encapsulation etc is a form of (colloquial) abstraction, but not Dijkstra's use of the word abstraction.




Maybe that’s the problem. Everyone knows that abstractions are desirable, and encapsulates as much as they can, and ends up with redirection hell without any of the advantages of true abstractions. If people understood what the word actually means, we might not be in this mess.




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