"nice functions"

The terms "nice" and "good" are used in an ad-hoc way throughout mathematics, and so giving them a fixed definition is counterproductive. The idea is to build intuition: we can expect our theory to work when we only consider objects that are not too strange, or we can guarantee the existence of objects satisfying certain properties that are easy to work with. Concrete definitions do not need to be introduced unless a technical discussion is forthcoming, and can inhibit readability otherwise.


It might mean continuous, it might mean differentiable, it might mean smooth etc. The only common theme is that the author didn't bother explaining it in more detail.


Comment converted to answer:

I read "nice" or "well-behaved" as "satisfying all requirements for the appropriate theorems I am using."