deep magic

[poss. from C. S. Lewis's Narnia books] An awesomely arcane technique central to a program or system, esp. one neither generally published nor 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}.

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