In his latest post Ben Ramsey suggests that "yak shaving" (a seemingly useless activity that lets you solve an immediate problem) is a core part of what we, as developers, do.

When I began my journey as a programmer, every task was fraught with problems, and I loved it. Everything was new, and every problem was an opportunity to learn and grow. It was great.

Somewhere along the way, though, problems became nuisances. As I grew older in life and my career, my tolerance for problems became lower, and my desire for things to Just Work became greater.

As I struggled to find a solution for the problem I had with Packer, Tate Eskew reminded me that yak shaving is a part of my job.

In his example he was working with Packer and hit a problem with the environment required to get it working. Instead of slogging through it he created a patch to make it work correctly with Amazon Machine Images.