[HN Gopher] Yak Shaving ___________________________________________________________________ Yak Shaving Author : smitty1e Score : 24 points Date : 2022-01-10 18:16 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (irreal.org) (TXT) w3m dump (irreal.org) | omarhaneef wrote: | I think the "bad" yak shaving is one where you never get any task | done. If you actually create TeK, and metafont and so forth, then | that isn't the "bad" sort. | | Whether it actually qualifies as Yak Shaving is an expedition I | will not go on, but I think you have to go back to the original | source (the xkcd comic), and then interpret the "point" of it and | so forth. That might be a worthy detour, and you can tell us at | the end if it counts as a yak shave. | wombatmobile wrote: | Is there any such thing as "procrastinating"? | | Luke: Master, moving stones around is one thing. This is totally | different. | | Yoda: No. No different. Only different in your mind. You must | unlearn what you have learned. | | Luke: All right, I'll give it a try. | | Yoda: No. Try not. Do... or do not. There is no try. | mml wrote: | I find this blog opprobrious | marcosdumay wrote: | Yak shaving is only procrastinating if it's optional. Any | interesting thing you create will need a huge set of errands into | unrelated tasks. If you refuse to do the errands, you'll never do | anything interesting. | ballenf wrote: | But TEX was a rather weak prerequisite to writing TAOCP. It | will undoubtedly be re-typeset in the future for either a new | device or a new generation. And the font surely an even weaker | prerequisite. (But both are totally Knuth's prerogative and I | hope no one over chastises him over either decision.) | | If the series isn't finished because of TEX, I think we'll feel | like it was a bad tradeoff. (But I could see others feeling | like TEX is is more valuable than volume 11 or whatever of | TAOCP). | oceanghost wrote: | You're correct. This guy seems to have misunderstood the | concept of Yak Shaving entirely. | bellyfullofbac wrote: | Seems like just a summary of the mentioned blog post, the author | probably saw the same HN post we did: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29861678 ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-01-10 23:01 UTC)