The game Oxyd for the Atari ST was completely written in ~Oberon~ (no, it was Modula-2). Such an addictive game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tm6ZgMKBL38

> So to me it seems that we don't want abstractions when trying to study certain things about a whole system. Instead, we want to view all of its components and then build our understanding from there. Abstractions hide the things that we care about.

I disagree. My experience is that most problems require a very thorough understanding of a specific slice of a system. It is rare (again, in my experience) that solving a problem involves understanding the whole system. This becomes more true the larger and more complex the system is. Abstractions allow you to ignore the irrelevant pieces and focus on what matters.