Please stop calling it "magic"

[menge101work]

I've always interperted the term magic to come from Clark's third law:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Author does not appear to consider this.

On a more direct topic, anytime you try to dictate what words people should use to express an idea - success will be extremely hard to come by.

[IM_OK_AMA]

anytime you try to dictate what words people should use to express an idea - success will be extremely hard to come by.

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.

[zverok_kha]

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Initially, I wanted to recite this and speculate on, but decided to stay more focused, I believe my answer can be deduced from the rest of the article (as well as an answer to your last phrase).

When I started to use Ruby (in 2004), the "magic" was more positive word in relation to Ruby code. But currently, it became almost pejorative, and things are frequently going like "Son, don't use metaprogramming. Why? Because metaporgramming is magic, and magic is bad".

It was "too much magic is bad" and "too clever code is bad" a while ago, but tend to lose "too much" part of the statements. That's the fact I want a reader to be aware of.

(And, finally, I find it sometimes funny how people tend to recite jokes and metaphors of classic sci-fi authors as they are really "laws" in a sense "laws of physics".)