In computer user interfaces a "wizard" is a set of screens that guide the user through a process.
Does anyone know the origin of this term? I personally associate wizards with magic more than a figure offering guidance.
computingetymologyjargonnouns
In computer user interfaces a "wizard" is a set of screens that guide the user through a process.
Does anyone know the origin of this term? I personally associate wizards with magic more than a figure offering guidance.
Best Answer
In computing, wizards were originally expert computer users (people) who could install software or help you with your installation. Later, they were software assistants (programs) to help with initial tasks of setting something up.
Human wizard
A wizard used to be a power-user, a programmer or someone with higher level of expertise.
Here's a signature in a 1982 posting to net.general Usenet group:
This is human wizard is defined in the Hacker's Dictionary. From a 1982 edition posted to net.misc:
This term was used right through the eighties and early nineties, and some software had a 'wizard mode', other software had a config file defining the username of the designated wizard. From comp.sources.games, 1990:
A 1990 news.groups definition:
Perhaps the step-by-step screens were named after these clever techies who could help us normal people set up those complicated systems. From the comps.emacs in 1988:
People who weren't wizards would have a hard time installing some software. From a 1982 post to fa.tcp-ip:
Unix wizards had their own newsgroup, comp.unix.wizards. A 1988 post suggests a tool for normal people:
A 1989 comp.os.vms suggested the role human wizards were in decline:
Other software wizards
A 1989 post in comp.sources.misc uses wizard as another name for daemon, a little always-running process:
Software assistant wizard
1992
Barrie England's answer gives the earliest OED citation of the November 1992 MacUser magazine:
The earliest I found in Usenet is 31st January 1992, comp.windows.ms:
21st March 1992, comp.windows.ms:
On 25th November 1992, Joel Spolsky, the Microsoft Excel Program Manager, said in comp.apps.spreadsheets:
1993
Phillip Paxton explains these now-familiar software wizards on 8th Febraury 1993 in comp.os.ms-windows.apps:
A 23rd February 1993 press release about Microsoft Visual C++ posted comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.misc in says:
And in more detail on 23rd March 1993 (comp.lang.c++):
Later
Wikipedia says the name was widespread and encouraged in the 2000s:
Edit: 1991 OED antedatings
I found examples of a software assistant wizards before the OED's earliest 1992 citation. In 1991, Microsoft release Publisher 1.0, that, according to a 2001 Microsoft article "pioneered Microsoft's "wizards.":
There's a handful of mentions of Page Wizards in magazines indexed by Google Books from 1991, the earliest I found is InfoWorld from 22nd July 1991 (Vol. 13, No. 29):
And InfoWorld from 5th August 1991 has a whole article on "'Wizards' make Microsoft applications smarter":