heavy wizardry

from Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003)

heavy wizardry
 n.

   Code or designs that trade on a particularly intimate knowledge or
   experience of a particular operating system or language or complex
   application interface. Distinguished from {deep magic}, which trades
   more on arcane theoretical knowledge. Writing device drivers is heavy
   wizardry; so is interfacing to {X} (sense 2) without a toolkit. Esp.:
   found in source-code comments of the form "Heavy wizardry begins
   here". Compare {voodoo programming}.

from The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)

heavy wizardry

   Code or designs that trade on a particularly intimate
   knowledge or experience of a particular operating system or
   language or complex application interface.  Distinguished from
   {deep magic}, which trades more on arcane *theoretical*
   knowledge.  Writing device drivers is heavy wizardry; so is
   interfacing to {X} (sense 2) without a toolkit.  Especially
   found in source-code comments of the form "Heavy wizardry
   begins here".

   Compare {voodoo programming}.

   [{Jargon File}]