7AbstractionLayers

July 20, 2004
Help me out -- I read a quote somewhere about software programmers frequently having to mentally navigate through seven(?) levels of abstractions, each a level an order of magnitude greater than the last. Seemed like a good quote to me. I can be flying high coding away on one level, then hit a snag which requires me to stop down and go under the hood and get involved in a whole other layer. Sometimes these tangents can last days.

Update: Ah, a colleague of mine found it, didn't even know I was looking for it. It's 9OrdersOfMagnitude.

tags: ComputersAndTechnology