Rootconf Mini 2024

Abstractions are great! They help us think without being overwhelmed by details. But sometimes they can come at the cost of understanding, where they become a wall that we don’t wish to climb. That limits us, because when they change, a lot of us can’t keep up.

In this talk, I make the following assertions:

1. In the last 10-15 yrs, progress of accessibility (the good part) in tech via frameworks, languages and best practices, has come at the cost of lesser awareness of internals (the bad part).
2. Every abstraction has a half life, stemming from the environment that birthed it, in the sense that when that environment changes, so does the relevance of that abstraction. 2-3 half lives in, people overly reliant on that abstraction can find themselves stuck.
3. Timing seems ripe for a change in bunch of different abstractions, thanks to some exciting progress in both hardware & software, of which I’ll share a few examples.
4. Preparing ourselves with foundational knowledge allows us to be better prepared for, and make the most of these changes.