The Law of Leaky Abstractions

Joel Spolsky has a nice essay on the leaky abstractions which underlie all high-level programming. Good reading, even for non-programmers.

Comments

After a long night of coding once

[teamhasnoi]

I looked down in suprise to find a leaky abstraction. Had to change pants.

Re:After a long night of coding once

[ERJ]

+3 Informative? Trust me, this is information that I don't need...

Abstraction:

[ewithrow]

Because the first step to solving any problem is always to create more problems.

-E

even for non-programmers

[Anonymous Coward]

Great! I'll print off a hardcopy and stick it on my refrigerator! I'm sure my wife will love it!

Leaky slashdotted server...

[dereklam]

I said that TCP guarantees that your message will arrive. It doesn't, actually. If your pet snake has chewed through the network cable leading to your computer, and no IP packets can get through, then TCP can't do anything about it and your message doesn't arrive.

Unfortunately, his Slashdotted server is proving that to us right now.

I'm sorry..

[Inoshiro]

"1) Good! You got yr packet!"

It seems like your keyboard keeps dropping packets. Could we have a repost of this comment?

Everything is an abstraction

[visionsofmcskill]

Leaky abstractions....?

oh come on.... Nothing is fullproof... every element of computing is an abstraction of something else.... Even assembly code is an abstraction of processor commands...

Not trying to insult the guy, he wrote a great article... but every time you use any command in any language your using an abstraction of many more commands... all we do in coding is build yet more tools not in any way disimilar from the ones were already using... Classes and functions, even straightly scripted programs.

My sense of smell is an abstraction from my nose's ability to respond to chemicals... So when i smell shit i suppose thats a leaky abstraction because i dont want to smell it....