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Figuring out the proper abstractions is much, much harder than writing the software itself. Software changes requirements... When you do something new and useful for a customer, they will extend use of the software till it breaks again. You will always run into a new bottleneck.

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The proper abstraction is that which can easily be thrown away. I've not found that to be too difficult to figure out. Maybe when I was new to development – that was too long ago to remember – but once you have experience, at least.

It can become extremely difficult to figure out if you mar yourself with someone else's framework. That is quite true. But is also what the parent said.

It's hard to generalize as domains vary greatly, but in general abstractions can account for more than enough extensibility unless the requirements are extremely vague and not well defined. This tends to be the case of why so many changes are constantly needed, because usually Product and Design are not defining requirements with abstractions in mind.

Domain Driven Design basically aimed at tackling this issue, by trying to synchronize abstractions across departments, so I get that there are no easy solutions, especially in large orgs.

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