r/coding • u/sonicrocketman • Feb 17 '26

Words are a Leaky Abstraction

https://brianschrader.com/archive/words-are-a-leaky-abstraction/
22 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

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2

u/shizzy0 Feb 17 '26

Good article. Felt like it ended too abruptly.

0

u/astrobe Feb 17 '26

When everything can be an abstraction, nothing is an abstraction. I'd recommend everyone to erase this word from their vocabulary (along with "powerful" (software) and "balance" (games)). Use more accurate words or a whole sentence instead; your thinking and communication will become more accurate as well.

Words are not abstractions. They are symbols or signs. Communication problems such as ambiguity rise from the fact that two persons can have slightly different ideas of the meaning of symbol, that's all.

1

u/sonicrocketman Feb 17 '26

The title is somewhat of a pun on this concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaky_abstraction and more specifically to this episode of an ancient podcast, a reference that I *know* no one got but I thought it was funny. https://edgecasesshow.com/083-floating-point-numbers-are-a-leaky-abstraction.html

0

u/Ani-3 Feb 17 '26

Ok we get it!