Not silly in my book.

The explanation makes sense when you move down a level of abstraction. When you're at the upper level of abstraction the outer assignment reads "assign these records to $foo via this do{} block". Some times we need a little nudge to move to a different level of abstraction. All of us do. The way I see it the need for the nudge is a feature, not a bug. It allows us to concentrate at one level with less distraction.

They say time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once. I'd say abstraction is our way of keeping from seeing everything at once.