He may have been referring to framework-level abstractions, but I was specifically referring to natural abstractions for the problem space. Blanket statements against abstractions in code is missing the point--abstractions are fundamental to programming. "Elaborate object frameworks" could mean a few different things. If you're referring to design pattern type structures, then I somewhat agree that the fewer the better. But in the general case it is not true that perfect is not being able to take anything more away. Not when humans are the ones writing and maintaining the code.