Quick question

I'm learning PHP to create some cool web mashup site. Everything is going great so far; I've got most of the database design down.

Anyway, just one question: what is abstraction? I keep hearing this phrase get banded around a lot and when I asked my professor about he gave me a funny look like he didn't know what I was on about. You guys at /pr/ seem a lot smarter than him, can you help me out?

THANKS IN ADVANCE

>>17
lol, enjoy working with 16MB of RAM.

PROTIP: You can buy an old P3 box and a wireless NIC for less than  the cost of a WRT (or most other wireless routers). Slap FreeBSD (or one of many routing solutions available) and you've got a significantly better performing, more stable platform for working on. The only difference is that it's cheaper, consumes more power and has a larger form factor. Shoot at it until it dies.