AI Is the Next Abstraction Layer

June 15, 2025

Every major leap in computing has followed the same pattern: a new abstraction replaces the thing below it, but the thing below it never stops being worth knowing.

Assembly language made it less necessary to know electrical engineering. But CS students still study circuits.

C came along to replace assembly. But CS students still learn about registers.

Java entered the scene to replace C/C++. But CS students still learn to manage memory on their own without a garbage collector.

AI looks like it’s poised to replace the need to code by hand. But CS students will still need to become masters of writing their own code, even if AI does the heavy lifting at their day job.

The abstraction changes. The foundation doesn’t. If you don’t understand what’s happening under the hood, you can’t debug it when the abstraction leaks. And it always leaks.

Notable omission from this timeline: JavaScript. It never should have been invented.