Good Thing


Good Thing

(convention)(From the 1930 Sellar and Yeatman parody "1066And All That") Often capitalised; always pronounced as ifcapitalised.

1. Self-evidently wonderful to anyone in a position to notice:"The Trailblazer's 19.2 Kbaud PEP mode with on-the-flyLempel-Ziv compression is a Good Thing for sites relayingnetnews".

2. Something that can't possibly have any ill side-effects andmay save considerable grief later: "Removing theself-modifying code from that shared library would be aGood Thing".

3. When said of software tools or libraries, as in "Yacc isa Good Thing", specifically connotes that the thing hasdrastically reduced a programmer's work load.

Opposite: Bad Thing, compare big win.