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Donald Knuth – The Patron Saint of Yak Shaves (2017)
- dang 3y agoThis looks to be a follow-up to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39607412 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39607412 and specifically to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39610324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39610324. Usually it's best not to post follow-ups as top-level submissions right away, because they create repetition on the front page and take energy away from the original thread. Generally speaking the good options are: (1) discuss the follow-up in the original thread while it's active; or (2) wait long enough for the hivemind caches to clear (say, a couple months for good measure) and submit the URL then. In short, it's a good submission but not necessarily a good submission now. I hope that makes sense!
- xtiansimon 3y ago> “hivemind caches” Are those ‘meat’ caches? Or, heretofore unknown to me, part of the HN tech stack?
- MontagFTB 3y agoThis makes perfect sense. Thank you for all the value you add to HN.
- contextfree 3y agoTAOCP itself embodies several layers of yak shaving, since he was initially commissioned to write a book on compilers, then decided to start the book with material on more basic algorithms (with compilers relegated to later chapters), then each pair of chapters expanded to become its own volume, then volume 4 expanded to become three or more volumes. 60 years later he still hasn't gotten to the compiler part yet! (which is supposed to be volume 7)
- jwilk 3y agoDiscussed in 2022: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29861678 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29861678 (99 comments)