A Good Thing and Bad Thing, written with capital letters for added
emphasis (and with the words similarly emphasized when spoken) is a
euphemism for something that has either positive or negative consequences, respectively, for a subject under discussion.
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<
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)
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