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.
