Michael Zhang

Null and Void

Yak Shaving

By ET

A lot of work we do everyday are “Yak Shaving” jobs.

yak shaving [MIT AI Lab, after 2000: orig. probably from a Ren & Stimpy episode.] Any seemingly pointless activity which is actually necessary to solve a problem which solves a problem which, several levels of recursion later, solves the real problem you’re working on.

In programming, some subroutines can be seen as yak shaving. Looking at my time in the office, a lot of time got spent on yak shaving. Some of them necessary, and many of them unnecessary. Unfortunately, before you do it, you don’t know whether a particular job is necessary or not necessary.

By ET This entry was posted on Sunday, November 4th, 2007 at 1:30 pm and is filed under General, Life, Random Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

1
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December 2nd, 2011 at 4:31 pm
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Michael Zhang@HKUST

Quote du Jour:

A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties, no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeeded be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

Albert Einstein