Law of Leaky Abstractions
Summary
Section titled “Summary”All non-trivial abstractions, to some degree, are leaky.
Origin
Section titled “Origin”Joel Spolsky, blog post “The Law of Leaky Abstractions” (2002).
Still Applicable?
Section titled “Still Applicable?”Yes. Especially critical when teams build on top of frameworks or cloud services.
Context Notes:
Section titled “Context Notes:”No abstraction perfectly hides the complexity beneath it. This law encourages engineers and leaders to retain a working knowledge of underlying systems, even when leveraging higher-level tools. It’s particularly relevant in cloud architecture, where cost or latency implications may leak through abstraction boundaries.