The effective exploitation of his powers of abstraction must be regarded as one of the most vital activities of a competent programmer.

Edsger W. Dijkstra

"The Humble Programmer" (1972)

The Abstraction Principle

Each significant piece of functionality in a program should be implemented in just one place in the source code. Where similar functions are carried out by distinct pieces of code, it is generally beneficial to combine them into one by abstracting out the varying parts.

Benjamin C. Pierce

Pierce, Benjamin (2002). Types and Programming Languages. MIT Press. p. 339. ISBN 0-262-16209-1.

[Abstraction] tries to factor out details from a common pattern so that programmers can work close to the level of human thought, leaving out details which matter in practice, but are immaterial to the problem being solved.

"Abstraction (computer science)", Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction_(computer_science). Accessed 6 October 2014.

Iteration is hard.

Ruby

array.each do |item|
  # do something
end

Javascript

for(var i =0; i< array.length; i++){
  // do something
}

Iteration is hard.

Ruby

array.each do |item|
  # do something
end

Javascript

for(var i =0; i< array.length; i++){
  // do something
}

Iteration is hard.

Ruby

array.each do |item|
  # do something
end

Javascript

for(var i =0; i< array.length; i++){
  // do something
}

Iteration is hard.

Ruby

array.each do |item|
  # do something
end

Javascript

for(var i =0; i< array.length; i++){
  // do something
}

The real problem in speech is not precise language. The problem is clear language ... It is really quite impossible to say anything with absolute precision, unless that thing is so abstracted from the real world as to not represent any real thing.

Richard Feynman

"New Textbooks for the "New" Mathematics", Engineering and Science volume 28, number 6 (March 1965) p. 9-15 at p. 14

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.

Pablo Picasso

ECMAScript syntax is relaxed to enable it to serve as an easy-to-use scripting language.

https://people.mozilla.org/~jorendorff/es6-draft.html. Accessed 12 May 2015.

Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful.

George E. P. Box

Box, G. E. P., and Draper, N. R., (1987), Empirical Model Building and Response Surfaces, John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY. p74.

tl;dr

• Abstraction: it's what programming is at it's most essential
• Abstraction: beginners struggle with it
• Abstraction: it will drive your culture and community
• ES6 Classes: an abstraction, a problem
• We should be teaching concepts not syntax
• Syntax that obfuscates concepts is problematic
• When we teach, we have to start at the beginning

The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.

Martin Heidegger

What is Called Thinking? [Was heisst Denken?] (1951–1952), as translated by Fred D. Wieck and J. Glenn Gray (1968)

Scientists work from models acquired through education and through subsequent exposure to the literature often without quite knowing or needing to know what characteristics have given these models the status of community paradigms.

Thomas Kuhn

Kuhn, Thomas. "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", pg 46 (1962)

We have an awesome opportunity to think more radically about how we extend JavaScript

We have an awesome opportunity to think more radically about how we build abstractions

To appreciate this point is to change our images of ourselves as programmers. We come to see ourselves as designers of languages, rather than only users of languages designed by others.

Abelson and Sussman

It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

Carl Sagan

Let's reconsider our ontology.

Let's reconsider our ontology.

Let's reconsider it early and often.

Let's reconsider our ontology.

Let's reconsider it early and often.

Let's stay beginners.