I agree with rather having good or correct abstractions than saving LOC. However, a bad abstraction can give readers/devs the wrong idea about what is behind it, how it works or how it can be used and when to rely on it. Unreliable abstractions are terrible. Leaky abstractions are also terrible. Both introduce a lot of mental load overhead.
Some people choose “no abstraction” over “poor abstraction,” which I don’t understand. Working without any abstraction is the same as working with an infinitely leaky abstraction.
Yeah. A pervasive poor abstraction can be painful, but in my own experience most misguided abstractions tend to be somewhat superficial and easy to unwind. It does worry me to see so much rhetoric in the wider programming community encouraging people to avoid abstractions, because this is the kind of lesson that is easy to imprint on newcomers -- but I suspect the easiest way to get good at them, is to do them badly a few times.
