Design Patterns · Senior · Question 62 of 75

What does the Law of Leaky Abstractions say?

✓Correct answer: All non-trivial abstractions leak details of what they hide, so users sometimes must understand the underlying layer
2Abstractions cause memory leaks
3Abstractions should never be used

Explanation

An ORM hides SQL until a query is slow; a fetch wrapper hides HTTP until caching misbehaves. Design for the leaks.

Further reading

Joel Spolsky: The Law of Leaky Abstractions ↗

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