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Good Thing

   Also found in: Wikipedia 0.24 sec.
(convention)Good Thing - (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.


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? Mentioned in ? References in classic literature
 
However, a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a good thing; the more's the pity.
Moby Dick I-LXVII by Melville, Herman View in context
You'll never really dislike me so long as I give you the opportunity to get off a good thing now and then.
Moon and Sixpence by Maugham, W. Somerset View in context
--Not riddle enough to scare human love from it, not solution enough to put to sleep human wisdom:--a humanly good thing was the world to me to-day, of which such bad things are said!
Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book For All And None by Nietzsche, Friedrich View in context
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