I tend to think of abstraction as the price. To see why this is justified, note that you can trivially come up with an abstraction that has no benefit (eg. pointless redirection), but coming up with one that has no cost (eg. developer-, compiler- or run-time) is near-impossible.
It's true that many abstractions pay for themselves many times over, but not all do. For some applications, this means that a language encouraging a more direct solution comes out ahead; for others one looks for languages that make the wanted abstractions cheaper.
It's true that many abstractions pay for themselves many times over, but not all do. For some applications, this means that a language encouraging a more direct solution comes out ahead; for others one looks for languages that make the wanted abstractions cheaper.