Law of leaky abstractions

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Quoting one of his examples on TCP over IP:
 
Quoting one of his examples on TCP over IP:
  
''TCP attempts to provide a complete abstraction [of providing realiable data transmission] of an underlying unreliable network [IP], but sometimes, the network leaks through the abstraction and you feel the things that the abstraction can't quite protect you from.''
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''TCP attempts to provide a complete abstraction [of providing reliable data transmission] of an underlying unreliable network [IP], but sometimes, the network leaks through the abstraction and you feel the things that the abstraction can't quite protect you from.''
  
 
== References ==
 
== References ==
 
[[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LeakyAbstractions.html The Law of Leaky Abstraction]]
 
[[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LeakyAbstractions.html The Law of Leaky Abstraction]]

Revision as of 00:52, 8 October 2008

All non-trivial abstractions, to some degree, are leaky. -- Joel Spolsky

In his article of "Law of Leaky Abstraction", Joel Spolsky claims that abstractions fail to a certain degree; sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. Thus, he coins the term "leakage".

Quoting one of his examples on TCP over IP:

TCP attempts to provide a complete abstraction [of providing reliable data transmission] of an underlying unreliable network [IP], but sometimes, the network leaks through the abstraction and you feel the things that the abstraction can't quite protect you from.

References

[The Law of Leaky Abstraction]

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