Good abstractions remove work

I’ve become suspicious of abstractions that mostly create vocabulary.

If using an abstraction means I now need to understand the original problem and six new concepts invented to wrap it, the abstraction may have moved the complexity rather than removed it.

The test I keep coming back to

After the abstraction exists, is there less that the next engineer needs to keep in their head?

Not fewer lines of code. Less mental state.

Those aren’t the same thing.

A good abstraction should make the common path boring and keep the exceptional path visible.

If it does that, keep it.

If it only makes the diagram prettier, I’m less convinced.