Quote of the Day: Yak Shaving - Ricochet.com

Posted by parceline on

Tuesday, February 26, 2019

The expression “the next thing you know, you will be shaving the yak” is a different way of describing a sequence of problems that takes one down the rabbit hole. It supposedly originated in the software world. Based on my career in software and enginering, I can certainly attest to this problem.

One example is that you need to update some application that you use for work. You find that will require updating the operating system. After doing that, you find that other applications also needs to be updated. Rinse and Repeat. Pretty soon, you are shaving the yak.

I think there are some times that the Yak Shaving can be beneficial. I will give two examples.

In High School Physics, the professor was talking about Newton and orbital mechanics. He said: “Newton realized that he needed to stop and invent Calculus.”* Now at the time, I was struggling in my calculus class and if I had known the expression, this would have been the ultimate Yak shaving exercise.” Fortunately, it worked out for Newton.
Over ten years ago, the Linux development community had a problem. They were using “Bitkeeper” as a version control system (a way to keep track of changes in a program) but it was not open source and had other problems. Eventually, Linus Torvalds (the initial developer of Linux) took a few weeks and developed a different version control system called “Git.” For me, that would have been another “Yak,” but Git is now probably the most used version control system in the world.

Of course, not all Yak Shaving is technical. I have really learned that since we moved to an old farmhouse with lots of trees. A typical example is:

Problem: A large branch down in the old apple orchard.
Sequence of events:

Get the chainsaw.
- Oops, there isn’t enough of the oil-gas mixture. Off to the hardware store and gas station.
- OK, now I need to sharpen the blade. Where is the file?
Now, get the Kubota (with front-end loader) to haul the cut tree either to the woodpile or back to the woods.
- Oops, the tire is flat … or,
- Oops, the battery is dead.
- Take care of those issues.
and so on and so on…

What Yaks have you shaven lately?

* There is some dispute of who invented calculus first, Newton or Leibniz, but that doesn’t fit my story, so I won’t mention it. See here for details.

Published in Group Writing

Let's block ads! (Why?)