tl;dr: The author recounts building their own static site generator from scratch instead of using Jekyll or Hugo, illustrating "yak shaving"—a term coined by MIT's Carlin Vieri after watching a Ren & Stimpy episode—where chained sub-tasks derail the original goal. While yak shaving usually wastes limited project budgets, it's intrinsically fun and occasionally pays off spectacularly, as when Donald Knuth created TeX, METAFONT, Computer Modern, and the literate programming paradigm just to typeset a book. The author argues it's especially valuable for learning, since the detours themselves teach you something even if you never finish.