You'll find no value judgement in my comment.

There are many axes of intelligence, as well as of human value in general. I only said that comfort-with-abstraction is one axis on which people vary -- and I'd say that's exactly what the previous comment relies upon.

All it says is "this is needlessly hard", the only reply can really be: yes, for you.

I was offering an explanation of why that is; or else are we really saying that this "hardness" is universal?

One of the more important characteristics of a developer is pragmatism which has zero covariance with comfort-with-abstraction. And so, why not value those who have that more?

That is, to be better at abstraction isnt to be a better developer. It is only to be better at one sort of development. Equally, to have more pragmatism is to be better at a different sort.

There's no snobbishness in my comment, only in a person who reads into it a value judgement about this specific form of intelligence.

Why read that into it?