> One doesn’t arrive at such an abstraction by writing a bunch of spaghetti code and encapsulating common patterns.
No you don't get an abstraction like the one you described. But you often can hide a huge mess of complex code behind an interface and make it simple for your part of the system to deal with it. e.g. Think of the interface to a search engine or a machine learning system.
> It’s not “simple” because it doesn’t require anyone to learn anything or work hard to understand it. It’s simple because once the abstraction is established and proven you’re free to think about bigger, more interesting ideas.
In many systems there aren't any more interesting ideas and in that case making an abstraction where you work hard to understand it is a liability. People don't have time for that. People particularly don't have time for changing it when the outside world changes such that the abstraction no longer fits. And the outside world changes quite frequently.
No you don't get an abstraction like the one you described. But you often can hide a huge mess of complex code behind an interface and make it simple for your part of the system to deal with it. e.g. Think of the interface to a search engine or a machine learning system.
> It’s not “simple” because it doesn’t require anyone to learn anything or work hard to understand it. It’s simple because once the abstraction is established and proven you’re free to think about bigger, more interesting ideas.
In many systems there aren't any more interesting ideas and in that case making an abstraction where you work hard to understand it is a liability. People don't have time for that. People particularly don't have time for changing it when the outside world changes such that the abstraction no longer fits. And the outside world changes quite frequently.