Ruby on Rails was created by in 2004 to simplify the app development process. This was achieved by “abstracting” some of the code, which means finding common elements between different parts of code and creating a tool to fulfill this job and that is available to different part of your app. A helper function is an example of code abstraction. That was the idea behind Rails: it handles the repetitive code that is common across apps and enables you to focus on the hard bits.
As always we are going to walk you up layers of abstraction. What that means is it will take a few lessons before you start to really feel the "magic" of Rails. That's good! Sometimes Rails provides so much magic that you don't actually know what's going on. Hopefully by understanding the HTTP underneath and by increasing levels of abstraction this will be mitigated.
Have a ton of fun. Rails changed the way Web Apps are developed; enjoy the spoils of many open source contributors' hard work.