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Comment by arthurofbabylon | Hacker News Reader

Author here. I know it's a bit idealized (just three!), but that's the purpose, to provide a simple sense of direction as we try to create better abstractions or better exist with existing abstractions.

I'll update the essay if I learn anything striking while applying the principle in my life and work.

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I didn't like the dishwasher example:

> For example, knowing that loading the dishwasher takes place on the Human abstraction layer will encourage us to not over optimize the position of dishes, to not over-clean the dishes before they go into the dishwasher.

The position of dishes also has a great bearing on the Nature/physics layer. Also, what's the actual abstraction in this example? A programming example since the area is mentioned would be more compelling.

I also don't believe in choosing/standardizing abstractions before looking at each case. Maybe it would better to frame abstractions as possibly/mostly addressing one of these broad concerns.

The dishwasher example is a leaky abstraction (like all abstractions)

Cleaning the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher is done purely because of physics reasons, but it surfaces into the human layer. Likewise the position of the dishes etc

You could try to design a dishwasher that minimizes this "leakage", for example, by providing a robotic arm to remove the bulk of food, but not surfacing lower level details into the higher level layers is fundamentally impossible

But that surfaces to the human layer as a precondition, just because the reason for the precondition is based on the physical layer doesn't necessarily mean it breaks the abstraction. I still need no knowledge of the how the dishes actually get cleaned.

You need knowledge or you will put a closed jar in and discover it doesn't clean inside.

Hey! interesting article.

I noticed that you published it using Minimal app.

I was curios how I could see other blogs published by you? There didn't seem to be a link pointing to your collection of blogs.

Is it less leaky than all the pre-existing systems of abstractions available?

If so, how will you demonstrate it?

That's the important question for people interested.

Please do! I like the idea a lot, and I'm really interested to hear about a real-life engineering decision you apply it to.

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