Learn abstraction to move fast. Learn fundamentals to innovate.

Abstraction is when you know how to use something to achieve a desired outcome without knowing how it works. You know how to drive a car, but not necessarily how the engine works.

As we advance technologically, there are more and more layers of abstraction. More abstraction means more speed. But if you truly want to innovate, you need to get to the fundamentals.

A few years ago, when I was getting started in web development, I started designing with Bootstrap rather than learning CSS. (For non-tech readers, Bootstrap is a library of many predefined CSS classes ready for you to use). No wonder I was having a hard time building a responsive website.

Some level of fundamental knowledge is required to use abstraction properly. But to truly innovate and come up with something new and better, you have to dig deep and get to the core fundamentals. Binary (0s and 1s) deep. Lol, not that deep. Maybe yes if you choose to revolutionize something.

If you ever get to that depth, you might find that it’s just one thing that has branched into so many things we see around us. The basis of everything.


Written by,
Rushi Patel