Tutorial Description - When you write code in Flash, you launch the Actions panel and start writing your statements. You don't think about how the Actions panel retrieves the data, how Flash compiles your code into an SWF, or how memory is managed internally by the Flash application. Such information is not directly relevant to whatever program you are writing. But, wouldn't your task be more complicated if you did have to figure out how all of those pieces worked in order to code in Flash?
Hiding those unnecessary details is known by a scary term - abstraction. The idea is that you can simply box up certain features/code/etc. and hope nobody would need to open up the box and look at the messy insides. As long as you plug in the right data to the box, you would received a predicted output.