Donald Knuth – The Patron Saint of Yak Shaves (2017)

This looks to be a follow-up to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39607412 and specifically to 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!

TAOCP 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)

Discussed in 2022: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29861678 (99 comments)