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  • Answering your last paragraph: of course. You don't even need private methods: public methods themselves are abstractions. Commented Oct 12, 2017 at 15:13
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    Possible duplicate of What is abstraction? Commented Oct 12, 2017 at 15:14
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    Note that, if you're looking for a formal definition of abstraction, you might not find one. Abstraction is a mental concept; it is more important to understand what it is and why it is important than it is to achieve a legalistic definition of the word. Commented Oct 12, 2017 at 15:19
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    Really, almost everything in computing can be considered an abstraction. A variable is an abstraction. A first-class function is an abstraction. A cache is an abstraction. A data bus is an abstraction. A closure is an abstraction. Programming languages are really sophisticated abstractions over machine code. And so forth. Garbage collection is absolutely an abstraction. Commented Oct 12, 2017 at 15:29
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    As a rule of thumb, if you can refactor a class into an interface without changing a lot of code, your class was pretty well abstracted to start with. I use this a guiding principle in class design. I have learned this is better than building an interface for every class and wait until I'm sure I need one. Commented Oct 12, 2017 at 19:47