---
title: "Why Installers Were Called Wizards"
categories:
- blog
year: 2023
abstract: and why Sourcers were not Wizards.
date: 2023-01-20T10:19:19+01:00
draft: false
tags: 
- trivia
- retro-computing
- wizards
---
Rember those good, old Install Wizards in Windows? Those may still be there, but I haven't used Windows in years. But why Wizard? Reddit user [iprobably8it](https://www.reddit.com/user/iprobably8it/) 8 years wrote (and blew my mind today):

> It may surprise younger people, but sending a file to a printer and having that printer apply ink to paper in the fashion you expected was not always that easy. It was made easier with wizards, which hid away all the complicated configurations, asked you about the things that the average user was most concerned with, and then magically made everything work the way you wanted.
>
> (...)
>
> They were called wizards because wizard's specifically are the men and women of fabled stories who read ancient tomes of arcane script and managed to extract the secrets of magic from them. No common man could simply read a spell-book. The terminology and symbols were as foreign as different language, and only the most intelligent could decipher them. Computer wizards read technical manuals and programming books during a time where the assembly language of computers was not a commonly understood or easily readable thing, and they unlocked the secrets of that language to harness the limitless power held within a microchip.

He has also taught me that Wizards and Sourcers are not the same. Two trivia in one!

[You can find the full thread here](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/3dn96m/eli5why_is_every_installer_called_wizard/)