Abstraction Engineering

Modern software-based systems operate under rapidly changing conditions and face ever-increasing uncertainty. In response, systems are increasingly adaptive and reliant on artificial-intelligence methods. In addition to the ubiquity of software with respect to users and application areas (e.g., transportation, smart grids, medicine, etc.), these high-impact software systems necessarily draw from many disciplines for foundational principles, domain expertise, and workflows. Recent progress with lowering the barrier to entry for coding has led to a broader community of developers, who are not necessarily software engineers. As such, the field of software engineering needs to adapt accordingly and offer new methods to systematically develop high-quality software systems by a broad range of experts and non-experts. This paper looks at these new challenges and proposes to address them through the lens of Abstraction. Abstraction is already used across many disciplines involved in software development – from the time-honored classical deductive reasoning and formal modeling to the inductive reasoning employed by modern data science. The software engineering of the future requires Abstraction Engineering – a systematic approach to abstraction across the inductive and deductive spaces.

We invite you to join the discussion on building a new discipline of abstraction engineering: with new silo-breaking research questions and research directions to explore!

Read the paper here.

You may also be interested in the articles and events below, including the references collected at the bottom.

Workshop on the fundamentals of conceptual modelling in conjunction with ER 2025. This workshop is asking questions of relevance to abstraction engineering, such as (taken from the CfP): “What are the elements of a theory of abstraction for modeling?” and “How to learn from and transfer principles of mathematical models?”
A NY Times article on the Abel Prize being awarded to a Japanese mathematician who abstracted abstractions.

References

Books

1991

Software engineering with abstractions

Valdis Berzins, and Lucia Luqi

Jan 1991

Bib

@book{BerzinsLugi91,
  author = {Berzins, Valdis and Luqi, Lucia},
  publisher = {Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., United States},
  title = {Software engineering with abstractions},
  year = {1991},
  isbn = {0201080044},
  month = jan,
  pages = {624},
}

Journal Articles

2026

An Abstraction Is Worth a Thousand Vibes

Jan-Philipp Steghöfer, and Markus Borg

IEEE Software 43(1), Jan 2026

Bib HTML

@article{SteghoeferBorg26,
  author = {Stegh{\"o}fer, Jan-Philipp and Borg, Markus},
  journal = {IEEE Software},
  title = {An Abstraction Is Worth a Thousand Vibes},
  year = {2026},
  issn = {1937-4194},
  month = jan,
  number = {1},
  pages = {13--16},
  volume = {43},
  doi = {10.1109/ms.2025.3621786},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1109/ms.2025.3621786},
  publisher = {Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)},
}

2025

Abstractions

Peter J. Denning

Communications of the ACM 68(3), Mar 2025

Bib HTML

@article{Denning2025,
  author = {Denning, Peter J.},
  journal = {Communications of the ACM},
  title = {Abstractions},
  year = {2025},
  issn = {1557-7317},
  month = mar,
  number = {3},
  pages = {21--23},
  volume = {68},
  doi = {10.1145/3710809},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3710809},
  publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)},
}

2023

Modeling 4.0: Conceptual Modeling in a Digital Era

Araz Jabbari, and Michael Rosemann

Communications of the Association for Information Systems 53(1), 2023

Bib HTML

@article{Jabbari2023,
  author = {Jabbari, Araz and Rosemann, Michael},
  journal = {Communications of the Association for Information Systems},
  title = {Modeling 4.0: Conceptual Modeling in a Digital Era},
  year = {2023},
  issn = {1529-3181},
  number = {1},
  pages = {1028--1051},
  volume = {53},
  doi = {10.17705/1cais.05344},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.17705/1cais.05344},
  publisher = {Association for Information Systems},
}

2021

Abstraction in Computer Science Education: An Overview

Claudio Mirolo, Cruz Izu, Violetta Lonati, and 1 more author

Informatics in Education 20(4), Dec 2021

Bib HTML

@article{Mirolo+21,
  author = {Mirolo, Claudio and Izu, Cruz and Lonati, Violetta and Scapin, Emanuele},
  journal = {Informatics in Education},
  title = {Abstraction in Computer Science Education: An Overview},
  year = {2021},
  issn = {2335-8971},
  month = dec,
  number = {4},
  pages = {615--639},
  volume = {20},
  doi = {10.15388/infedu.2021.27},
  publisher = {Vilnius University Press},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.15388/infedu.2021.27},
}

2015

Understanding software through linguistic abstraction

Eelco Visser

Science of Computer Programming 97, 2015

Special Issue on New Ideas and Emerging Results in Understanding Software

Abs Bib HTML

In this essay, I argue that linguistic abstraction should be used systematically as a tool to capture our emerging understanding of domains of computation. Moreover, to enable that systematic application, we need to capture our understanding of the domain of linguistic abstraction itself in higher-level meta languages. The argument is illustrated with examples from the SDF, Stratego, Spoofax, and WebDSL projects in which I explore these ideas.
@article{Visser2015, author = {Visser, Eelco}, journal = {Science of Computer Programming}, title = {Understanding software through linguistic abstraction}, year = {2015}, issn = {0167-6423}, note = {Special Issue on New Ideas and Emerging Results in Understanding Software}, pages = {11-16}, volume = {97}, doi = {10.1016/j.scico.2013.12.001}, keywords = {Linguistic abstraction, Programming languages, Domain-specific languages, Software understanding}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scico.2013.12.001}, }

2007

Is abstraction the key to computing?

Jeff Kramer

Communications of the ACM 50(4), Apr 2007

Bib HTML

@article{Kramer07,
  author = {Kramer, Jeff},
  journal = {Communications of the ACM},
  title = {Is abstraction the key to computing?},
  year = {2007},
  issn = {1557-7317},
  month = apr,
  number = {4},
  pages = {36--42},
  volume = {50},
  doi = {10.1145/1232743.1232745},
  publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/1232743.1232745},
}

Conference and Workshop Papers

2008

Concrete Examples of Abstraction As Manifested in Students’ Transformative Experiences

Jan Erik Moström, Jonas Boustedt, Anna Eckerdal, and 4 more authors

In Proc. 4th Int’l Workshop on Computing Education Research, 2008

Bib HTML

@inproceedings{Mostrom+08,
  author = {Mostr\"{o}m, Jan Erik and Boustedt, Jonas and Eckerdal, Anna and McCartney, Robert and Sanders, Kate and Thomas, Lynda and Zander, Carol},
  booktitle = {Proc. 4th Int'l Workshop on Computing Education Research},
  title = {Concrete Examples of Abstraction As Manifested in Students' Transformative Experiences},
  year = {2008},
  address = {New York, NY, USA},
  pages = {125--136},
  publisher = {ACM},
  series = {ICER '08},
  acmid = {1404533},
  doi = {10.1145/1404520.1404533},
  isbn = {978-1-60558-216-0},
  keywords = {abstraction, learning theory, threshold concepts, transformation},
  location = {Sydney, Australia},
  numpages = {12},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/1404520.1404533},
}

The role of abstraction in software engineering

Orit Hazzan, and Jeff Kramer

In Companion of the 13th international conference on Software engineering - ICSE Companion ’08, 2008

Bib HTML

@inproceedings{HazzanKramer08,
  author = {Hazzan, Orit and Kramer, Jeff},
  booktitle = {Companion of the 13th international conference on Software engineering - ICSE Companion ’08},
  title = {The role of abstraction in software engineering},
  year = {2008},
  pages = {1045},
  publisher = {ACM Press},
  series = {ICSE Companion ’08},
  collection = {ICSE Companion ’08},
  doi = {10.1145/1370175.1370239},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/1370175.1370239},
}

A hierarchical abstraction model for software engineering

Yingxu Wang

In Proceedings of the 2nd international workshop on The role of abstraction in software engineering, May 2008

Bib HTML

@inproceedings{Wang08,
  author = {Wang, Yingxu},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2nd international workshop on The role of abstraction in software engineering},
  title = {A hierarchical abstraction model for software engineering},
  year = {2008},
  month = may,
  pages = {43--48},
  publisher = {ACM},
  series = {ICSE ’08},
  collection = {ICSE ’08},
  doi = {10.1145/1370164.1370174},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/1370164.1370174},
}

1991

Towards a new model of abstraction in software engineering

G. Kiczales

In Proceedings 1991 International Workshop on Object Orientation in Operating Systems, 1991

Bib HTML

@inproceedings{Kiczales1991,
  author = {Kiczales, G.},
  booktitle = {Proceedings 1991 International Workshop on Object Orientation in Operating Systems},
  title = {Towards a new model of abstraction in software engineering},
  year = {1991},
  pages = {127--128},
  doi = {10.1109/IWOOOS.1991.183036},
  keywords = {Software engineering;Object oriented modeling;Object oriented programming;Programming profession},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1109/IWOOOS.1991.183036},
}

Miscellaneous

2024

Abstraction Engineering

Nelly Bencomo, Jordi Cabot, Marsha Chechik, and 4 more authors

2024

Bib HTML

@misc{BencomoEtAl24,
  author = {Bencomo, Nelly and Cabot, Jordi and Chechik, Marsha and Cheng, Betty H. C. and Combemale, Benoit and Wąsowski, Andrzej and Zschaler, Steffen},
  howpublished = {arXiv preprint},
  title = {Abstraction Engineering},
  year = {2024},
  doi = {10.48550/arXiv.2408.14074},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2408.14074},
}