[ThrowawayCoward]

Interesting. My description of magic is there because I specifically see two programming-related definitions.

When used with Rails, it's usually derogatory, and it means something like "something tricky or obscure and complex that is done in order to provide an easy interface", and in that sense, it is usually derogatory and used when the someone believes there is a straightforward way that may be an even easier interface, or is at worst, not much more cumbersome than the interface that is presented.

The other definition - the one I used, is, for example, how many developers would answer "How does the Linux syscall mechanism work?" In that case, the syscall interface is very much needed to provide an easy interface, and it's not incredibly complex.

One often seems like the other until you look into it, but I still think they are separate.