It was always my understanding that in programming "magic" is just a shorthand for "I don't feel like explaining the implementation in that much detail right no

It was always my understanding that in programming "magic" is just a shorthand for "I don't feel like explaining the implementation in that much detail right now". The Jargon File defines it similarly: http://catb.org/jargon/html/M/magic.html http://catb.org/jargon/html/M/magic.html