The Law of Leaky Abstractions (2002) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Law of Leaky Abstractions (2002)

#91

Post by cloogshicer » Thu, Mar 07, 2024, 8:04 PM UTC

jerf wrote: post #84

cloogshicer wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is precisely those restrictions that bring the benefits [...] Wouldn't it be possible to say "ok, I'll take those restrictions as long as they benefit me, but once I notice that they no longer do, I'll break them and drop down to the lower layer. But only for those parts that actually require it"? > Abstractions necessarily involve being irreversible, or, to forestall a tedious discussion of the definition of "i…

Yes, it would be OK to do that. One of the worst things abstractions can do is seal you away from the lower level even though you still need to get there. Another example I recently used was a CRUD framework that 100% took over the routing of URLs and had no callouts whatsoever for a non-CRUD-framework page. A CRUD framework may do many wonderful things for my CRUD pages but I may still need a URL to go somewhere els…

Thank you very much for this detailed explanation! I'll have to let it sink in a bit.

Re: The Law of Leaky Abstractions (2002)

#92

Post by samsquire » Thu, Mar 07, 2024, 8:33 PM UTC

cloogshicer wrote: post #24

I've long been having a hunch that we're currently in the "wild west of abstraction". I think we're missing an essential constraint on the way we do abstraction. My hunch is that this constraint should be that abstractions must be reversible. Here's an example: When you use a compiler, you can work at a higher layer of abstraction (the higher-level language). But, this means you're now locked into that layer of abstr…

This is something I think a lot about.

I spend a lot of time trying to think of something that composes. Monads are one answer.

I think we need advanced term rewriting systems that also optimize and equivalise.

I really enjoy Joel on Software blog posts from this era.

Re: The Law of Leaky Abstractions (2002)

#93

Post by saghm » Fri, Mar 08, 2024, 5:07 PM UTC

cloogshicer wrote: post #79

saghm wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My hunch is that this constraint should be that abstractions must be reversible. > Here's an example: When you use a compiler, you can work at a higher layer of abstraction (the higher-level language). But, this means you're now locked into that layer of abstraction. By that I mean, you can no longer work at the lower layer (assembly), even if you wanted to. You could in theory of course modify the compiler output…

Yes, you understood correctly. What I'm saying is extremely radical and would require rethinking and rebuilding practically everything we have.

Thanks for the clarification! I'm probably too far into the orthodoxy to seriously consider something like this, but I admire your willingness to question things that most of us probably take for granted.