Perl and SQL are my starting-points as a programmer. I'm not interested in the details below my point of entry but neither do I wish to do most of my work in an abstraction layer which is too far removed from the core language.
Your meditation asks, "what is an appropriate level of abstraction?" It sounds to me like you've already decided this. For you, the highest appropriate level of abstraction is Perl and SQL. That's a fine choice to make, but it makes your question seem a bit misleading.
I think chromatic was simply trying to make the point that choosing the level that's "abstract enough" is somewhat arbitrary. I'm sure you have reasons for choosing where to draw the line, but, at the end of the day, the most important thing is whether the application does its intended job.
