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Alex Ilies
Alex Ilies

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🚀 The enemy of developers

I believe that developers face various challenges in their work, such as distractions, lack of knowledge, poor organization, and unproductive discussions and meetings. However, one of the most insidious obstacles is abstraction. While abstraction is indeed a fundamental principle of Object-Oriented Programming and plays an important role, it can sometimes be overwhelming due to its ubiquity.

These days, abstraction is pervasive, with almost every library or framework offering an abstraction layer designed to simplify tasks and improve efficiency. While it is important to have abstractions in place to avoid reinventing the wheel, they can also present challenges and problems, particularly for novice developers.

In some cases, abstractions can be counterproductive, necessitating a deep dive below the abstraction level to understand and make changes to the underlying system. This requires a grasp of the fundamental concepts and an awareness of the work that has been abstracted in order to modify the flow or create another abstraction on top. Often, developers, especially inexperienced ones, do not delve beneath the abstraction layer of a particular library or topic, instead using it "as is".

It's worth noting that abstraction is not inherently problematic. Most people utilize the internet, television, or radio without fully understanding how they work. However, developers should be mindful of the potential pitfalls associated with abstraction and strive to balance convenience with a solid understanding of the underlying systems.

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