wizard n.
1. Transitively, a person who knows how a complex piece of
software or hardware works (that is, who groks it); esp. 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. The term `wizard' is also used intransitively of someone who
has extremely high-level hacking or problem-solving ability. 3. A
person who is permitted to do things forbidden to ordinary
people; one who has wheel privileges
on a system. 4. A Unix expert, esp. a Unix systems programmer.
This usage is well enough established that `Unix Wizard' is a
recognized job title at some corporations and to most
headhunters. See guru, lord high fixer. See also deep magic, heavy wizardry, incantation, magic, mutter,
rain dance, voodoo programming, wave a dead chicken.
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W =
Wizard Book n.
"Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" (Hal
Abelson, Jerry Sussman and Julie Sussman; MIT Press, 1984, 1996;
ISBN 0-262-01153-0), an excellent computer science text used in
introductory courses at MIT. So called because of the wizard on
the jacket. One of the bibles of the
LISP/Scheme world. Also, less commonly, known as the Purple Book.