I think its important, especially in posts like this that are targeted to beginners, that certain information be left out and not clarified (essentially making the masked parts "magic"). Otherwise, the reader is overwhelmed with information and really can't grasp the overall picture. I think this article succeeds on its goal of shedding some light on how the node event loop works at a high level, and its straightforward about its goals in that regard.

Imagine trying to explain to someone how math operations work in js, you wouldn't really want to explain how numbers are represented in the computer until you get to something that necessitates that understanding - like bit operations.

So, I'd just say it depends on your goals, if your goal is to explain precisely how every detail of something works, then yes I'd agree with you, there's no excuse for magic. But if you want to explain how a general concept works I'm fine with loads of "magic" holes you can fill in for yourself later.

The use of the term "magic" to describe spooky abstractions or odd behavior caused by referential opacity far, far predates Rails.

To be fair, the productivity gains that using Rails gets you is pretty magical.

Right, I agree with this. There's nothing magic about any of this -- ultimately it's all just software, hardware and physics.

To describe something as magic in a serious context is toxic. We're not sleight of hand performers, we're engineers. It's more helpful to state something like, "this library is complicated and the internals are beyond the scope of this post". A pointer to documentation and source code on libuv would be even better. In face, this series of articles on libuv are a great start for those who are interested: https://nikhilm.github.io/uvbook/introduction.html

If all occurrences of "this is [magic]" are treated as "this is [sufficiently complicated internally and beyond the scope of this post]," then what's the difference? The former makes for a point that's expressed more succinctly and eloquently at little real loss.

I went and looked in the Oxford English Dictionary and did not find your definition of magic there. http://www.oed.com/search?searchType=dictionary&q=magic&_sea...

Definition 2a seems related: "Producing [...] remarkable results, like those attributed to magic [...]; effecting or permitting change, success, etc., as if by magic."

Also the 'magic box'.

The Urban Dictionary (the place where I look for colloquialisms) has this definition: "with or through complexity either spurios to the contemproary context or to long to be reasonable or desired of explanation". [1]

1: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=magic&defid=9...

This is what we like to call a "figure of speech". It means that we do not believe to be literally magic, but are using hyperbole to describe a situation where something happens and it's not immediately apparent why.

It's older than Rails, I remember the interpreter being described as magic in SICP. It was mentioned as such several times over the course of the book, and was somewhat thematic.

Until, of course, the final chapter (or was it the chapter before the final chapter), where you learned that magic isn't real.