What’s the attraction behind printing things out? The new guy at work has printed at least a dozen emails this week, and also printed several of the documentation pages out and posted them in his cube. When I’m showing him something, I’m sure to say “This has a Wiki page. You can just copy and paste these commands I’m running, just like I’m doing right now.” But he has to write down every command I run on a big ol' pad of paper.
I’ve been trying to stay virtually paperless. I take notes on my PDA instead of dead trees. I do have a notebook handy in case I need to do something that requires it, like diagramming an application or environment, but I rarely have to use it. I kinda feel like the wasteful habits of my co-worker are invalidating my good intentions. Looking around me in the last week, I’ve seen a lot of desks covered in stacks of papers, and I’m finally realizing how common this is. Why do so many people need paper copies of everything, when they just end up being unused clutter?