I think too often “magic” ends up existing in that sort of story as just alternate technology. It can make the dichotomy between them seem like little more than an aesthetic difference, and it’s especially obvious when the magic is highly systematized. A wizard who threatens to shoot fire from his hands, who is loaded up on his mana resource and has great aim with his hand-blasts, seems to me like little more than a person with a fancy gun.

There are some examples of “system” magic that still feels distinct though, like in Earthsea or Discworld, where magic is a tool that interacts with the world like technology, but cannot be manipulated without something special that is difficult to exploit. Discworld’s magic is basically 40k orks, magic that stems from collective belief, which is hard to manufacture inorganically. Earthsea’s magic comes from understanding things deeply, being able to capture the essence of things in a word and then being able to manipulate it. The “magic” ends up being the same hard-to-define relationship between the world and the words we use to break it into pieces. In a way, it’s like technology’s shadow, the same drive to control and understand but in the opposite direction.