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The definition of yak shaving seems totally wrong to me. I always understood it to following way (as an example): 1. You need component X to carry out the orig
by selfhoster11 5y ago
The definition of yak shaving seems totally wrong to me. I always understood it to following way (as an example):
1. You need component X to carry out the original task
2. To get component X, you need to do something else
3. Several steps of recursion later, you end up shaving a yak - an activity that's unrelated whatsoever to the original task, but is still a dependency.
- enchiridion 5y agoYep, that’s the definition I’m familiar with.
- 21echoes 5y agoThis seems to be exactly the definition given in the article?
- bhauer 5y agoMy read of the article was quite different. Namely, "Imagine you had to shave a yak. There would be a lot of things involved in getting that done, many of which you don't know ahead of time." Ultimately the same underlying meaning, but quite a different illustrative scenario.
- QuercusMax 5y agoYes, your goal isn't to shave a yak, it's to do something else, but you have endless side quests including being a yak barber.
- karomancer 5y agoYes I've heard this too, but I've also heard both. While writing this I found a lot of opposing definitions (as mentioned with bus factor). I've also heard "Don't shave the yak!" as part of the definition you gave for yak shaving. Thanks for the feedback! I'll incorporate this too to make it more complete.
- djmips 5y agoWatching the video in the article is better than the article! ;-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fnfeuoh4s8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fnfeuoh4s8
- pchristensen 5y agoThat’s the video I was hoping for!
- kemayo 5y agoAlthough, to the grandparent's point, that's very much a "getting distracted while performing the task" video -- the first several steps didn't show Hal having to divert, after all. He could have replaced the lightbulb and then gone back to fix the shelf, and fixed the shelf and then gone back to oil the drawer. It's only oiling the drawer that demonstrates true yak-shaving, since he then has to buy more oil and fix the car.
- infogulch 5y agoSometimes I suspect that my current yak-shaving chain might have one step somewhere that isn't strictly necessary... but then I quickly dismiss that idea and start to write a report about why every step is needed, but then I notice how our wiki is disorganized should be split up into the four primary kinds of documentation as described by https://documentation.divio.com/ https://documentation.divio.com/, but then I noticed that our wiki service is running on an old server that hasn't been updated in 2 years and maybe it's time to switch to a saas provider, but wait does the provider I was looking at support the wiki syntax our current wiki uses? ...