But abstractions and declarative languages have their place. Consider relational algebra and SQL, and all the little declarative languages within other languages, like regular expressions, printf/scanf format strings, even char escape sequences.
But these require a lot of thought and talent to up with, and to design (e.g. codd didn't design SQL). Whereas TFA is talking about whole languages, and designed ad hoc.
But abstractions and declarative languages have their place. Consider relational algebra and SQL, and all the little declarative languages within other languages, like regular expressions, printf/scanf format strings, even char escape sequences.
But these require a lot of thought and talent to up with, and to design (e.g. codd didn't design SQL). Whereas TFA is talking about whole languages, and designed ad hoc.