someone gave me a bit of grief the other day about my [use of the] phrase, “bootstrapping the chicken”.

i will elaborate - invariably, there’s some need to get something going but there are a number of external/circular dependencies which require resolution. more often than not in a large organization, this is a function of inertia, laziness, politics, etc.. in such an environment you can circle about endlessly pondering the relative merits of different mechanisms for dependency resolution.

alternately, you can simply suck it up and bootstrap the chicken.

which is to say, externally resolve all of the dependencies and bring something into its initial form through sheer force of will.

bootstrapping the chicken

v. the process whereby dependencies are externally resolved to bring a product, process or activity into its initial usable form.