(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 KbaudPEP mode with on-the-flyLempel-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)
