However, I feel that you've missed the point. There is a very real phenomenon in programming (and in life in general) for finding oneself in an ever-lengthening chain of tasks, all spawned as sub-tasks of something you want to accomplish. The challenge is always to find the right place to stop, re-assess, and possibly abandon the existing stack in order to get the original task done.
Yes, this an an image. Yes, it's intended to be humorous, but no, it's not just a funny picture. It carries a real message.
Perhaps the HN audience doesn't have anything constructive to say about the general problem of Yak-Shaving. Perhaps the problem has no real solution. Perhaps there is a solution, but the HN community isn't clever enough, or motivated enough, or interested enough to try to solve it.
But it would be nice to see some intelligent discussion.