---
title: "But yak shaving is fun"
url: https://daily.dev/posts/but-yak-shaving-is-fun-wzbtbbuhe
source_url: https://parksb.github.io/en/article/32.html
type: article
source: "Lobsters"
published: 2026-06-17T09:42:36.841Z
updated: 2026-06-17T09:42:57.577Z
reading_time: 8
upvotes: 0
comments: 0
language: en
---

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# But yak shaving is fun

**[Lobsters](https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters)** · 8 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments

## Summary

A personal reflection on yak shaving — the phenomenon of chasing a chain of prerequisite tasks until you lose sight of the original goal. The author shares how building their own blog led to accidentally creating a static site generator, then explores the origins of the term (coined at MIT AI Lab, inspired by a Ren & Stimpy cartoon), and discusses both the pitfalls and the genuine value of yak shaving. Donald Knuth's creation of TeX — a decade-long detour that produced a programming language, a paradigm, an algorithm, tools, and a typeface just to typeset a book — is held up as the ultimate yak shave. The author argues that while most yak shaving fails in production contexts, it is a remarkably effective learning strategy, because every tangent teaches something worthwhile.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://parksb.github.io/en/article/32.html>

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