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Comment by mjd | Hacker News Reader

The previous article was about bikeshedding. This one is just about getting distracted.

You're, uh, both wrong. Properly, a "bike shed" discussion is one where many people inject their opinion on a subject that is peripheral and needless. The opinions may very well be correct, but the weight of the discussion is a loss vs. just picking someone's choice and moving on.

By implication, this happens because the more complicated details of a project (e.g. designing a nuclear reactor in the original) or community are complicated and the domain of specific experts, and arguing about peripheral details (the color to paint the bike shed) is a way for the non-experts to show contributions.

Isn't bikeshedding defined to be "arguing about trivial details." The first article wasn't about arguing. Also since semantics are trivial, this is meta.

The articles are about two subtly different problems. The first is finding something difficult in your code and then getting distracted learning about it in depth. The second is about getting lost in the process applying deep theory to a simple concept. The first is "I know too little, I must know more", while the second is "I know all this cool theory, I must use it."

I think both could probably be called bikeshedding, but it's interesting to make a distinction between the two.

I've never used bike shed to describe digressions on my own work. I might call these a Yak shave.

I think the jargon you're looking for is "yak shaving" not bikeshedding (which is about arguing about minor changes).

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