[eurleif]

You didn't just say "highly abstract", you also said "intellectually demanding". You only seem to be addressing the "highly abstract" part now. All of the failure modes you mention sound like failures of intellect to me.

Also, common failure modes of people working as programmers != common failure modes of people trying to become programmers. Even if most people working as programmers understand the abstractions involved well enough to function (and I'm not certain that's actually true), the abstractions may still be too much for many other people.

>In fact excessive or premature abstraction is a widely recognized failure mode of software engineers, and the myth is responsible in good part for that.

Part of really understanding abstractions is knowing when not to use them. And since, as you say, many people have trouble with that, understanding abstractions must be tough.