

How to come up with good abstractions - j_baker
http://jasonmbaker.com/how-to-come-up-with-good-abstractions

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numeromancer
An abstraction is just a pattern with a name.

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j_baker
Actually, I'd say it's the other way around.

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numeromancer
I no grok.

Do you mean that a pattern is an abstraction with a name?

A pattern is a physical thing in the world, there whether we see it or not.
When we notice it (forming an image of it in our own minds) and name it
(assigning its image a single token to be related to other such images, and
maybe shared) it becomes an abstraction. The abstraction depends on the
pattern, not the other way around.

That's the way I abstract the pattern, anyway.

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j_baker
Ah, I thought you meant pattern as in a "design pattern". I suppose that makes
sense. The difficult part is knowing what patterns to name, how to name them,
and what to apply them to.

