[nikanj]

I think he was talking about procrasti-coding. “Should be working on X, but really captivated by a well-defined and elegant Z instead”

Printing arctan tables sounds like a seminal example of a Advent of Code kind of problem, which have been known to nerd snipe countless programmers.

[AceJohnny2]

Exactly. It's kind of related to yak-shaving, except the task you're spending time on may not at all be related to the one you should be focusing on.

I've more than once caught myself lovingly perfecting some utility script when, really, I had some more important stuff I should've been focusing on.

The reason, of course, is that I'm getting that rewarding feeling of accomplishment on the script, when I know the feeling will be further out (or unattainable) on the Main Task.