Has the word Abstraction other interpretations in computing?

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I am quite new in programming and what haunts me about it is not really the coding (well at least not until the present moment!) itself, but some words/concepts that are really important to understand. My doubt is with the word "ABSTRACTION". I have already searched dictionaries and saw some videos of people giving very clear explanations of the word. So, I know that abstraction is when you take into consideration only the things that are important and leave out everything else (putting in very simple and direct language), like for instance, if you are going to change a light bulb, you do not need to know the manufacturer of the light bulb or the light socket. You also do not need to know the materials used to manufacture the light bulb. However, the problem is when you read some texts or listen to people using the word and it does not seem to fit the meaning and then you start to wonder if they misused the word (which I think is very unlikely) or it is because there is another obscure meaning that I have not found yet or maybe it is just because I am too dumb to understand it. Below I put excerpts from articles I was reading and bolded and capitalized the part where the word appears so you guys have a context and understand where my problem is. Thank you.

"A paradigm programming provides and determines the view that the programmer has on the structuring and execution of the programme. For example, in object-oriented programming, programmers MAY ABSTRACT A PROGRAMME AS A COLLECTION OF OBJECTS that interact with each other, while in functional programming, programmers ABSTRACT THE PROGRAMME as a sequence of functions executed in a stacked fashion."

"A tuple space has the function of creating a SHARED MEMORY ABSTRACTION over a distributed system, where everyone can read and write to it."

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3 Answers

These seem to fit the definition you put up earlier. For object oriented programming, the mindset is to consider "objects" as the essential (important) aspect of a program and abstract all other considerations away. Same thing for functional programming where "functions" are the defining aspect abstracting other considerations as secondary.

The tuple space may be a little trickier but if you consider that variations in memory storage models are abstracted away in favour of a higher level concept focusing on a collection of values, then you see what the abstraction relates to.

user_52375600

It's easy to understand if you replace abstract/abstraction with one of its synonyms conceptualize/conceptualization. In your first two examples "abstract a programme" means "think of a programme as"... or "conceptualize a programme as"... When we make an abstraction we forget about some details, and think about that thing in other terms.

Side advice from a fellow beginner: As someone who started learning computer science independently less than a year ago, I can tell you right now there will be lots of tricky terms like this. Try not to get too caught up in them. Often times if you just keep learning, you'll experience first hand what these terms mean without even realizing it. Bits and pieces will add up. The takeaway from this being, don't let what you don't know slow you down. Sometimes it's ok to keep going and just not know for a while.

user_127265450

Abstract

adjective

  1. existing in thought or as an idea but not having a physical or concrete existence.
  2. relating to or denoting art that does not attempt to represent external reality, but rather seeks to achieve its effect using shapes, colours, and textures.

verb

  1. consider something theoretically or separately from (something else).
  2. extract or remove (something).

noun

  1. a summary of the contents of a book, article, or speech.
  2. an abstract work of art.

There you have your answer. Ask 100 people what an abstract painting is, you will get at least 100 answers. Why should programmers behave differently?

Lets see what Oracle has to say about abstract classes:

Abstract classes are similar to interfaces. You cannot instantiate them, and they may contain a mix of methods declared with or without an implementation. However, with abstract classes, you can declare fields that are not static and final, and define public, protected, and private concrete methods.

Consider using abstract classes if any of these statements apply to your situation:

  • You want to share code among several closely related classes.
  • You expect that classes that extend your abstract class have many common methods or fields, or require access modifiers other than public (such as protected and private).
  • You want to declare non-static or non-final fields. This enables you to define methods that can access and modify the state of the object to which they belong.

Compare that with the definition of abstract in the above section. I think you get a pretty good idea of abstractness in computer programming.

user_118675900
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