Good article about coding abstraction tools

This article from Hacking Hat is pretty good. It is a good reminder that there is no silver bullet (no shit) and that a tool that is trying to abstract a complex system has its limits. I would say that writing a program that abstracts a complex system can work but it can't be a generic off-the-shelf piece of software. Why is that though? I think one reason is that programming is purely a mental exercise and people never think the same way. Which means that the person implementing writing the off-the-shelf-software will make assumptions like "no one would ever do that" but in reality there is a good reason to do that for corner case X. You could make it so the off-the-shelf software could be configured but then it will be confusing and too complicated for most people to use and so the cycle continues.

Could there be a way to write a program that would hide a complicated system and make it work for the "common" user? Yes, I think so. I have seen some abstractions that work but they have all been custom software that works for one company.

I know other companies are trying to once again abstract code so that non-programmers can make programs. I just don't see this happening as programming is already pretty abstracted, I am sure there will be new abstractions but overall it will come down to people who will get it and the people who won't.

Well enough rambling I have work to do.