Most of us have fell down these rabbit holes of learning before; the author does a great job of illustrating the concept, showing the solving of an "ultimate question" about how/why something works the way it does.
I don't know if it counts the same, but I once went on a weird journey to solve a particular coding problem that I was certain was already answered. I don't recall the details, but I do recall thinking to myself "This seems like a common problem; a quick google should bring up a solution..." - so, one google search later, and:
At that point, I vowed to solve the problem - again - and post the solution (of course the fact that I can't recall what the problem was negates me being able to show you what I mean - my apologies - sigh).
I quickly found that to solve the problem, I first had to learn how to code X, which in turn meant learning about Y and Z, and also coding A, B and C. I ended up going down these rabbit holes; by turns learning and coding partial solutions, by others finding example code I could adapt to my needs (not always in the language I was working with, either). I spent more than a few hours on this task, but I eventually did come up with a solution.
And as I recall, I did post that solution to the thread where I encountered XKCD-979 - so future people wouldn't be inconvenienced.
I don't know if it counts the same, but I once went on a weird journey to solve a particular coding problem that I was certain was already answered. I don't recall the details, but I do recall thinking to myself "This seems like a common problem; a quick google should bring up a solution..." - so, one google search later, and:
https://xkcd.com/979/
At that point, I vowed to solve the problem - again - and post the solution (of course the fact that I can't recall what the problem was negates me being able to show you what I mean - my apologies - sigh).
I quickly found that to solve the problem, I first had to learn how to code X, which in turn meant learning about Y and Z, and also coding A, B and C. I ended up going down these rabbit holes; by turns learning and coding partial solutions, by others finding example code I could adapt to my needs (not always in the language I was working with, either). I spent more than a few hours on this task, but I eventually did come up with a solution.
And as I recall, I did post that solution to the thread where I encountered XKCD-979 - so future people wouldn't be inconvenienced.