Shaved yak

Any apparently useless activity which, by allowing you to overcome intermediate difficulties, allows you to solve a larger problem. I was doing a bit of yak shaving this morning, and it looks like it might have paid off. A less useful activity done consciously or subconsciously to procrastinate about a larger but more useful task. Yak shaving is a progranming term that refers to a series of tasks that need to be performed before a project can progress to its next milestone. It’s bad enough when one person gets all up in arms yak shaving, but when you try to get a group of people together, you’re just as likely to end up giving the yak a manicure.

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The term was coined by Carlin J. So what is pre- shaved yak ? Yak shaving is a phenomenon that occurs when you must complete a series of seemingly unrelated tasks in order to ultimately achieve your primary goal. And yak shaving, as funny as the term may soun is somewhat common for software development teams. And a Pull Request is essentially a contribution made to the community.

Github, Issues, Pull Requests. Shortly after, someone made Filer compatible with the promise-based operation. A Guide to Yak Shaving Your Code. An Example of a Yak I’ve Shaved.

Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. One of my favorite phrases in the tech world is “yak shaving”. Most of us have run into this before: we want to make coffee, then realize we’re out of beans and need to make a run to the store, so we jump in the car — only to realize that we’re almost out of gas and. The next thing we know, we have a freshly- shaved yak licking our faces in appreciation.

As enticing as this sounds, yak saliva does not live up to its reputation. Don’t ask me how I know this. When yak slobber beckons, however, you can resist. You need to notice when you’re off course. I woul however, distinguish that from according-to-Hoyle yak shaving, which is something a good deal less useful.

The notional yak, at least in my min refers to the dogged determination to unwind an apparent skein of dependencies at any cost—even when a less circuitous approach could solve the parent problem more elegantly. Recent blog posts Forum. At Gruntwork, we do a lot of yak shaving. We’ve spent the last couple years building Infrastructure Packages (reusable solutions to common infrastructure problems, such as how to run a Docker cluster or how to manage your network topology in AWS), and along the way, we’ve shaved many, many yaks. What is a pre- shaved yak ? Or in an idiomatic perspective, doing a useless activity that has a temporarily heightened sense of relevance because of the need to procrastinate.

The serendipity that can be found within yak shaving. And when yaks laugh, they kick. And believe you me, you don’t want to be yak kicked.

Again, these are experiences you wouldn’t know about lest you had shaved one! Last, but certainly not least, know that yaks do not like their eyebrows shaved. The exclusive cushions are stuffed with Yak hair. Ok, it’s tenuous, but there’s a point.

Lets look at the tasks in the story above. You will take the undercover role of yak shampooer, using a traditional soap made from fesh river water and dung. During your mission, you will also be required to shave the yaks, as it is yak shearing season.

It is absolutely not recommended to leave Yak’s half shampooed or half shaved as this will blow you cover too. Our very own Carlin Vieri invented the term, and yet it has not caught on within the lab. There was an unexpected service failure.

So you set out to get a cup of coffee.