Abstraction

Abstraction lets us hide detail and share behaviour, but each one makes a promise about what is common. These posts look at abstraction in practice - deciding what is worth abstracting, and what to do when an abstraction stops earning its place.

3 posts with this tag

October 12th, 2026

Escaping the Cohabiting Trap in Shared Components

The wrong abstraction leaves you with a component shared in name only, with a riot of flags charting different paths. Here, we look at how to spot this cohabiting trap, and how to escape by letting each caller take back what is theirs.

December 2nd, 2025

Resisting the Whispers of a Form-Engine

Every iOS dev hears that whisper sooner or later: "These fields look the same…you should build a form-engine." Those who follow that whisper almost always end up with an over-abstracted mess. Here, we look at building a simple validation flow that keeps us on the right path.

April 26th, 2017

Coincidental Duplication Costs Really Add Up

Coincidental duplication is where we see common functionality between features that just happen to behave or look the same but were never intended to be the same. We then take this coincidental duplication and wrongly build a coupled solution around it. Here, we look at how to avoid that.