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)