I assume most spells are more like executables once they've been studied. So healing somebody without killing them is more like remembering the flags on grep. Maybe some are a pain, but get out your spellbook.

This also explains why our protagonist has time to go around doing adventures and casting spells, while many of the other wizards seem to be old greybeards living in towers. They are actually doing a totally different kind of magic, writing the spells, debugging them, etc.

So if wizard = programmer, most charactes in Harry Potter wouldnt be wizards. Maybe you could call them spell users?

Hmm, in Harry Potter "wizards" seems to describe the entire human magical society, so I don't think they are using this sort of classification.

A good name for someone who only casts spells could be a magician on a conjurer.

On the other hand, when telling a story, I think it makes sense to make it so that the main character is a wizard just because it has the most cultural cachet. And most people don't want a story about debugging. So either we could be skipping over their day-job debugging (most programmers also have decent computer skills as a side-effect, so when the village is attacked by goblins it makes sense that some wizard would suddenly be flexing their more directly applicable skills). Or wizard could be something broad, like "general STEM person," and the main character is in some applied subfield. Or the magic creators could have some other job title (Mage, although that sounds a little generic for some reason... Sorcerer among people who are into games is sometimes mapped too closely to the wizard/sorcerer distinction from D&D, but not every magic system has to follow D&D tropes and it does have a good pun built in... or something like spell-weaver could be made up).

That is why modern spellmakers have the tlateochihualapaztli, or the Metaspell, in which other spells can be cast and isolated from the outside world, and their effects recorded and carefully combed through for problems; testing of more advanced spells may also need the iztlacatlamatini, or the Fakespell, which can emulate the weave of other spells without actually casting them, letting other spells talk to it without knowledge of its illegitimacy.

Enter the "Hello Mouse" experiment, where a young magichealer-in-training first maims a rodent, and then tries to heal it, to master the technique before being allowed to even think about sentient beings.

Might enjoy Off to be a Wizard.

Magic is just programming.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18616975-off-to-be-the-w...

> I imagine myself trying to cast a spell like that and having to go through fifty iterations to even begin to start doing the right operation without killing the person; and even when fully trained making tons of error while doing it complete with much swearing and cursing.

This is more or less how AonDor magic in Sanderson's Elantris works. You spell out what you want to do in a sort of kanji language, often with unexpected results. And you have to draw the characters really accurately for it to work.

The Dying Earth books by Jack Vance explore a world where the knowledge to build new spells has basically been lost, and are the biggest inspiration for how DnD wizards work.

Likewise I wonder when the wizard's customers will wise up to the fact that they're being endangered while getting fleeced. Fiction is about suspension of disbelief.