[prog] Joel on Software: Leaky Abstractions

[Jimen Ching]

On Wed, 16 Apr 2003, Mary wrote:
>The idea is that, say, a ASP programmer (Spolsky works with Windows by
>and large) now needs to know HTML, ASP, Visual C++, C++ and the Windows
>API because of the leaks in each abstraction.
>
>The idea of abstraction is meant to be that you don't need to care about
>what's underneath, but it turns out to be any good at, say, ASP, you
>really need to know all the underlying abstractions too. Hence, you need
>to know *more* language details than you would if you were a C++
>programmer.

Can you have different abstractions?  I.e. abstraction A hides detail X,
while abstraction B hides detail Y.  Of course, both abstractions would be
considered leaky for someone who wants to hide both X and Y.  But can you
just not use either abstraction and develop another one?  Of course, if
you create an abstraction that hides both X and Y, then that will obsolete
these two.  Is this possible?  Or is the article saying you can't develop
your own abstraction that hides what you want?

--jc
-- 
Jimen Ching (WH6BRR)      jching at flex.com     wh6brr at uhm.ampr.org