May 15, 2003

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.

Posted by Jargon File at May 15, 2003 10:45 AM

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