Heavyweight

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The Jargon File Parts of this article are based on the Jargon File, v. 4.4.7, a public domain document of hacker jargon.

heavyweight

Usage: adj. Derivation: Common

heavyweight: adj.

[common] High-overhead; baroque; code-intensive; featureful, but costly. Esp. used of communication protocols, language designs, and any sort of implementation in which maximum generality and/or ease of implementation has been pushed at the expense of mundane considerations such as speed, memory utilization, and startup time. EMACS is a heavyweight editor; X is an extremely heavyweight window system. This term isn't pejorative, but one hacker's heavyweight is another's elephantine and a third's monstrosity. Oppose lightweight. Usage: now borders on techspeak, especially in the compound heavyweight process.

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