A person, usually an experienced or senior software engineer, who is intimately familiar with many or most of the numerous restrictions and features (both useful and esoteric) applicable to one or more computer programming languages. A language lawyer is distinguished by the ability to show you the five sentences scattered through a 200-page manual that together imply the answer to your question "if only you had thought to look there".
Compare wizard , legal , legalese .
[ Jargon File ]
(1995-02-15)