High-overhead; baroque; code-intensive; featureful, but
costly. Especially 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
use 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.
Opposite: "lightweight". Usage: now borders on technical
especially in the compound "heavyweight process".
(1994-12-22)
Nearby terms:
heat sink « heat slug « heavy metal « heavyweight » heavy wizardry » Hebbian learning » heisenbug
