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Isn't software itself an abstraction layer to communicate with the underlying physical components? In theory, it's possible to build a machine that solves a problem without any software at all. Isn't this what an automaton represents—hardware directly engineered to perform specific tasks without the need for software?

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> Isn't hardware itself an abstraction layer to communicate with the underlying physical components?

Sure, but you're really straining the word "abstraction" here. By this definition all metaphysical concepts are just abstractions around material reality. Which is fine, albeit not that useful a definition of abstraction.

I agree. My point was that all software components rely on some form of abstraction. A SaaS, for example, is essentially a wrapper around a database, just as the database itself is a wrapper around OS APIs, and so on.

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