Good Thing
<convention> (From the 1930 Sellar and Yeatman parody "1066 And All
That") Often capitalised; always pronounced as if capitalised.
1. Self-evidently wonderful to anyone in a position to notice: "The
Trailblazer's 19.2 Kbaud PEP mode with on-the-fly Lempel-Ziv compression is a
Good Thing for sites relaying netnews".
2. Something that can't possibly have any ill side-effects and may save
considerable grief later: "Removing the self-modifying code from that shared
library would be a Good Thing".
3. When said of software tools or libraries, as in "Yacc is a Good Thing",
specifically connotes that the thing has drastically reduced a programmer's work
load.
Opposite: Bad Thing, compare big win.
[Jargon File]
(1995-05-07)
Nearby terms:
gonk « gonkulator « GOOD « Good Thing » Google »
googol » googolplex
