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Joel on Software · 2002

The Law of Leaky Abstractions

There's a key piece of magic in the engineering of the Internet which you rely on every single day. It happens in the TCP protocol, one of the fundamental building blocks of the Internet. TCP is a way to transmit data that is reliable. By this I mean: if you send a message over.

Why we picked it

Starting from TCP reliability grounds a durable engineering lesson: simplified interfaces cannot eliminate every underlying complexity.

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Link last checked 2026-07-15. Stumble Reads publishes recommendations and short commentary; the original work belongs to its author and publisher.