good thing

Free On-line Dictionary of Computing

<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)

The Jargon File

[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.