Abstraction Theory of Things

I was listening to the Ruby Rogues podcast the other day when Yehuda talked about his abstraction theory of things. This is a great way to describe the jobs we have as designers and programmers, and this applies to other jobs as well.

Yehuda says:

For most people in the world, your job is to present an abstraction layer that hides most of what you do.

Though he goes on to talk about frameworks and libraries, but I see how this is such a universal insight that defines the purpose of our lives in the context of providing a service to other people. The best product, service or a piece of work is the one that hides the fluff away, takes out the things that do not matter and presents it minimally. Great companies like Apple already do this pretty well. And it’s the reason you don’t have to keep in mind about the internals of Rails while developing your application.

I’ve started to focus on abstracting things out while I work and it has changed the way I see things. Whether it’s speech, art, photography, programming or design, try thinking of hiding the trivial stuff and abstracting it, I am sure it will have a profound effect on your work.

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