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Deep Magic

/dēp ma-jik/

[poss. from C. S. Lewis's "Narnia" books]

n. An awesomely arcane technique central to a program or system, esp. one not generally published and available to hackers at large (compare black art); one that could only have been composed by a true wizard. Compiler optimization techniques and many aspects of OS design used to be deep magic; many techniques in cryptography, signal processing, graphics, and AI still are. Compare heavy wizardry. Esp. found in comments of the form "Deep magic begins here...".

Compare voodoo programming.