This reminded me of a statement David Zicarelli (creator of Max/MSP/Jitter) made many years ago - that he originally started working on Max in order to make a t

This reminded me of a statement David Zicarelli (creator of Max/MSP/Jitter) made many years ago - that he originally started working on Max in order to make a tool to help him compose novel and interesting music, and then he got so drawn into making the tool that he lost interest in the music composition itself. If we're to call Max/MSP/Jitter "yak shaving", it is a shining star of it since so many artists - both visual and sonic - build their work on it. The other obvious one is Knuth - inventing TeX and Metafont and Computer Modern typefaces so he can write his books the way he wants to. Another shining star.