I originally wrote the following for my Chainline Newsletter , but I continue to get tweets about this idea, so I'm re-publishing the article here on my blog. This version has been lightly edited. I've been thinking about the consequences of the "wrong abstraction." My RailsConf 2014 " all the little things " talk included a section where I asserted : duplication is far cheaper than the wrong abstraction And in the summary, I went on to advise : prefer duplication over the wrong abstraction This small section of a much bigger talk invoked a surprisingly strong reaction. A few folks suggested that I had lost my mind, but many more expressed sentiments along the lines of: This, a million times this! " @BonzoESC : "Duplication is far cheaper than the wrong abstraction" @sandimetz @rbonales pic.twitter.com/3qMI0waqWb " — 41 shades of blue (@pims) March 7, 2014 The strength of the reaction made me realize just how widespread and intractable the "wrong abstraction" problem is.…