Good Thing

Good Thing
 n.,adj.

   [very common; always pronounced as if capitalized. Orig. fr. the 1930
   Sellar & Yeatman parody of British history 1066 And All That, but
   well-established among hackers in the U.S. as well.]

   1. Self-evidently wonderful to anyone in a position to notice: "A
   language that manages dynamic memory automatically for you is a Good
   Thing."

   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. Oppose {Bad Thing}.
    

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 K{baud} {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)