> The friction itself does not add value

Exactly. I don't have to write binary machine code directly, every zero and one artisanally crafted by hand, to have thought deeply for years about a how to solve a problem.

In fact, choosing the right level of abstraction is essential to my ability to solve the problem.

For most problems, the friction of writing binary code by hand is the wrong level.

And we're discovering that many important problems can be solved faster and with greater quality than can be achieved by dogmatically hand-writing every line of source code just for the friction.