<
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)