heavyweight

	This is the JargonFile ^(V4.00) entry for heavyweight - Next: heisenbug, Prev: heavy wizardry
:heavyweight: /adj./ 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 isnt pejorative, but one hackers heavyweight is anothers elephantine and a thirds monstrosity. Oppose lightweight. Usage: now borders on techspeak, especially in the compound heavyweight process.
* (text is auto-included via JargonExtension by mutante using jargon with VERSION 4.0.0, 24 JUL 1996* - JargonFile by Eric S. Raymond is in the public domain)*