Dijkstra: "The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise". It's a favourite quote of a good friend. I'm growing to like it more and more by the day.
Perhaps I'm getting old, or perhaps it's because I'm working more and more on larger teams, with code that I did not write, but I find that I cannot deal with 50+ details at the same time any more.
If the details bleed from another part of the code, and I was forced to do a depth first reading of the code at every function call, I might be somewhat uncharitable towards the original author.
Imagine a circular buffer - in my world, it should have an IsEmpty() function. Few would argue this. If I had to wander into the internals of CBuffer and start comparing first, and last, and remembering if it's Empty when they are the same, or when they are 1 away from each other, don't forget to MOD by the size of the buffer, where was I going with this, hold on, let me go back over that again...
The abstraction IsEmpty() is very precise. In a sense it's far more precise than any comparison of first and last pointers, since it expresses exactly what I want to know, not how to go about finding out. And I can simply trust IsEmpty(), because it will (should) have unit tests. But if I am repeatedly adding this comparison code to my class, then every time I add it, I can goof it.
You would think that this is software 101, and nobody needs reminding about this. But again and again it creeps into code, usually more complex code than a simple buffer, but it does creep in.
It creeps in in little ways, like the train wreck antipattern. It creeps in when there are comparisons that imply something else. The little comment along side "// only set if" is a giveaway that we have been far too intimate with another class, when we should be maintaining a professional distance.
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