Good Thing

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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.

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