In information technology, the term lightweight is sometimes applied to a program, protocol, device, or anything that is relatively simpler or faster or that has fewer parts than something else. For example, in programming, a lightweight thread is a program thread (an instance of use) that takes fewer instructions to keep track of than an ordinary thread, thus enabling the program to handle more users at the same time at an acceptable performance level. The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol ( LDAP ) enables network directory that is faster than previous directory access protocols. Perl is sometimes said to be lightweight because it is generally easier to learn and faster to write code in than a more capable but complex language such as C .
