wizard

1. A person who knows how a complex piece of software or

hardware works (that is, who groks it); especially someone

who can find and fix bugs quickly in an emergency. Someone is

a hacker if he or she has general hacking ability, but is a

wizard with respect to something only if he or she has

specific detailed knowledge of that thing. A good hacker

could become a wizard for something given the time to study

it.

2. A person who is permitted to do things forbidden to

ordinary people; one who has wheel privileges on a system.

3. A Unix expert, especially a Unix systems programmer. This

usage is well enough established that "Unix Wizard" is a

recognised job title at some corporations and to most

headhunters.

See guru, lord high fixer. See also deep magic, heavywizardry, incantation, magic, mutter, rain dance,

voodoo programming, wave a dead chicken.

4. An interactive help utility that guides the user through a

potentially complex task, such as configuring a PPP driver

to work with a new modem. Wizards are often implemented as

a sequence of dialog boxes which the user can move forward

and backward through, filling in the details required. The

implication is that the expertise of a human wizard in one of

the above senses is encapsulated in the software wizard,

allowing the average user to perform expertly.

[Jargon File]

(1998-09-07)