I don't think he's complaining so much as pointing something out.
All programming is abstraction. Even binary could be seen as obscuring the analog physical properties of the chip. What you have to decide is what level of abstraction best presents the things you care about, and sets aside the things you don't.
I personally always lean towards abstractions that are strong when it comes to correctness, even if that means they're leaky when it comes to performance. You can always go back and optimize later.
This is why I hate writing C(++). At the language level they may enforce correctness assumptions well enough, but abstractions written in them are incredibly leaky in terms of correctness.
All programming is abstraction. Even binary could be seen as obscuring the analog physical properties of the chip. What you have to decide is what level of abstraction best presents the things you care about, and sets aside the things you don't.
I personally always lean towards abstractions that are strong when it comes to correctness, even if that means they're leaky when it comes to performance. You can always go back and optimize later.
This is why I hate writing C(++). At the language level they may enforce correctness assumptions well enough, but abstractions written in them are incredibly leaky in terms of correctness.