Meaning:
Something or someone that comes in the nick of time to solve a difficulty,
especially in works of fiction.
Background:
This Latin term is a translation from the original Greek and owes its origin
to Greek drama. 'Deus ex machina', literally 'god from the machina' refers to
the machina - the device by which gods were suspended above the stage in the
Greek theatre. This began being used in English texts from around the middle
of the 17th century.
...
In the Greek dramas a common plot device was to lower the gods into the
action to sort things out and bring about a tidy conclusion. The modern-day
version would be the cavalry riding over the horizon, or some character
awaking and realizing the previous action had all been a bad dream.
The term is used these days as an implied criticism of implausible happy
endings when the intervention of some improbable fairy godmother-like figure
is considered too easy or clich [sic].
- www.phrases.org.uk
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I used to debug, i.e., to find errors in software that caused crashes, as part
of the job. It was like detective work, and could feel hopeless once in a while
after fruitless efforts. When everything failed, managers had to play the role
of deus ex machina. Wielding powerful rhetoric, he could point the finger at
someone else, kick the can down the road, or propose an upgrade to get around
the problem. As one of them used to say "there are non-technical solutions to a
technical problem."
