[rramadass]

> But here's the kicker: since the actual abstraction mechanism in our languages is procedural, we can only create essentially procedural abstractions. For all other kinds of abstractions, the leakage is close to 100% and we are left with just indirection.

Not quite true. "Abstraction" is what you imagine/design according to your needs and treat as a "Single Concept" (eg. a Design Pattern). The fact that it is made out of more granular elements i.e. machine instructions/language statements/procedures for a state machine does not change your ability to reason and work with abstractions at a higher level. While there maybe some "leakage" (mainly when things fail/need for performance) it is by no means total.

Also many people often equate Abstraction with Indirection since the latter is so prevalent in defining the former. But they are different concepts and have to be treated as such.