3 ms·

This kind of reinforces my opinion that I made the right decision by going completely paperless at home. All documents are electronic. Anything that needs signi

This kind of reinforces my opinion that I made the right decision by going completely paperless at home. All documents are electronic. Anything that needs signing gets signed digitally. I'll admit, it was a hard mental adjustment to make the shift and wasn't without some effort to figure out how to make it work, but now that I have, I'm happy I did. I did away with a printer more than a year ago now and every time I think of going back, I look at the price of ink cartridges and realize how much better for my wallet and the environment the switch has been.

stanmancan 6y ago
This is great if you can pull it off. Do you have any school aged kids? I'd say 80% of our printer use is for school projects or forms that have to get printed out, signed, and physically handed back in. Not sure how we could get by without one. With that being said, when we did buy a printer about 5 years ago we bought a monochrome Brother laser printer and it's a way better investment than inkjet printers (if you don't need to print pictures or something)
- balabaster 6y ago
  I have two school age kids, and yes, that's been a constant battle. Teaching them to think about how to be able to submit projects electronically has been a learning curve for all of us.
- wing-_-nuts 6y ago
  When I dealt with this in school, I would simply fill the answers in on a separate document. Make sure answers are labeled correctly. Scan in notebook drawings if needed. I haven't had a printer in decades. If I absolutely have to get something printed out, I go to the library or print shop.
awb 6y ago
Our HP printer ran out of ink and we stopped printing at home. It's far easier / cost-effective to pay 19 cents at CVS in the rare event I need anything printed these days, than to mess around with paper jams, ink, a bulky printer on my desk or these ridiculous "pay as you go" printing plans.
dragontamer 6y ago
I'm basically going down the opposite path, and am learning how to more effectively use my printer for a variety of tasks. You can Doxygen your code into a .pdf, and then print off a reference copy of your API. Use a 2-hole punch with standard prong fasteners: and you've got a decent binding system (far superior to staples). Just $15 for a 2-hole punch, $5 for 100x prong fasteners. From there, double-sided print from a laser-printer is pretty efficient. ---------- A Booklet of 100 pages can hold a surprising amount of information, and practically works as a 2nd (or 3rd) monitor for your productivity. Learning to make __books__ out of your printer, by using a basic binding system (comb binders, 2-hole punch, or 3-hole binders) is a good skill to have. It really does improve your productivity.
- strombofulous 6y ago
  Why do you find print better than an electronic version of the same thing? Having never tried it, I would assume your method is worse because it lacks features like easy editing and search.
  - dragontamer 6y ago
    > Why do you find print better than an electronic version of the same thing? Because it converts desk-space into "screen space", so to speak. > easy editing A lot of things don't really change when you're coding. For example, APIs, or "vocabulary objects" of your code. But if you really need to edit some object that's changed, pull out a pencil and write it into the margins. Or print out the new page, and stick it into your book. No need to reprint everything. 2-hole punch + prong binder is easy to disassemble and reassemble. Comb-binder is a bit harder, but its a superior binding if you care about that. 3-hole punch is pretty much designed for easy editing: very easy to add and/or remove pages. But in all honesty, 3-hole punch is a terrible reading experience so I still prefer 2-hole punch and/or comb binders (even if they're harder to edit). > search You don't use the paper version to "search". (Though crude methods exist: dog-earing common pages or putting sticky notes / literal physical bookmarks into some pages). If you need to search, search on the computer for the material. Then, open up to the page you need in the physical book. Bam, now you have a reference and can use the screen-space on your monitor for something else. ---------- A dedicated reference page (such as OpenMP Reference Cards: https://www.openmp.org/wp-content/uploads/OpenMP-4.0-C.pdf https://www.openmp.org/wp-content/uploads/OpenMP-4.0-C.pdf) is of course best. Doxygen -> Latex isn't the best at automated layout, but it does get the job done. I mention it mostly because its "low effort" to convert code into a physical paper reference copy. If you really need a reference sheet, you should manually craft a nice reference sheet in MS Word, or HTML5, and print it out. Nothing beats hand-crafted effort, but the low-effort methodologies are still worth knowing.
asciimov 6y ago
Gotta get a laser to see the benefits. I have a recipe binder. When I cook something new, I print it off, If I like it I put it in a plastic sleeve and into the binder. I also like it for printing out instructions when working on my car or building stuff. Last year I replaced the intake manifold on my car with a tune up. It was so nice to have a paper instructions with check list that I could get greasy. Finally, I sometimes print off code to take notes and edit offline, so I can get away from distractions and really think about things.

stanmancan 6y ago

This is great if you can pull it off. Do you have any school aged kids? I'd say 80% of our printer use is for school projects or forms that have to get printed out, signed, and physically handed back in. Not sure how we could get by without one. With that being said, when we did buy a printer about 5 years ago we bought a monochrome Brother laser printer and it's a way better investment than inkjet printers (if you don't need to print pictures or something)

balabaster 6y ago
I have two school age kids, and yes, that's been a constant battle. Teaching them to think about how to be able to submit projects electronically has been a learning curve for all of us.
wing-_-nuts 6y ago
When I dealt with this in school, I would simply fill the answers in on a separate document. Make sure answers are labeled correctly. Scan in notebook drawings if needed. I haven't had a printer in decades. If I absolutely have to get something printed out, I go to the library or print shop.

awb 6y ago

Our HP printer ran out of ink and we stopped printing at home. It's far easier / cost-effective to pay 19 cents at CVS in the rare event I need anything printed these days, than to mess around with paper jams, ink, a bulky printer on my desk or these ridiculous "pay as you go" printing plans.

dragontamer 6y ago

I'm basically going down the opposite path, and am learning how to more effectively use my printer for a variety of tasks. You can Doxygen your code into a .pdf, and then print off a reference copy of your API. Use a 2-hole punch with standard prong fasteners: and you've got a decent binding system (far superior to staples). Just $15 for a 2-hole punch, $5 for 100x prong fasteners. From there, double-sided print from a laser-printer is pretty efficient. ---------- A Booklet of 100 pages can hold a surprising amount of information, and practically works as a 2nd (or 3rd) monitor for your productivity. Learning to make __books__ out of your printer, by using a basic binding system (comb binders, 2-hole punch, or 3-hole binders) is a good skill to have. It really does improve your productivity.

strombofulous 6y ago
Why do you find print better than an electronic version of the same thing? Having never tried it, I would assume your method is worse because it lacks features like easy editing and search.
- dragontamer 6y ago
  > Why do you find print better than an electronic version of the same thing? Because it converts desk-space into "screen space", so to speak. > easy editing A lot of things don't really change when you're coding. For example, APIs, or "vocabulary objects" of your code. But if you really need to edit some object that's changed, pull out a pencil and write it into the margins. Or print out the new page, and stick it into your book. No need to reprint everything. 2-hole punch + prong binder is easy to disassemble and reassemble. Comb-binder is a bit harder, but its a superior binding if you care about that. 3-hole punch is pretty much designed for easy editing: very easy to add and/or remove pages. But in all honesty, 3-hole punch is a terrible reading experience so I still prefer 2-hole punch and/or comb binders (even if they're harder to edit). > search You don't use the paper version to "search". (Though crude methods exist: dog-earing common pages or putting sticky notes / literal physical bookmarks into some pages). If you need to search, search on the computer for the material. Then, open up to the page you need in the physical book. Bam, now you have a reference and can use the screen-space on your monitor for something else. ---------- A dedicated reference page (such as OpenMP Reference Cards: https://www.openmp.org/wp-content/uploads/OpenMP-4.0-C.pdf https://www.openmp.org/wp-content/uploads/OpenMP-4.0-C.pdf) is of course best. Doxygen -> Latex isn't the best at automated layout, but it does get the job done. I mention it mostly because its "low effort" to convert code into a physical paper reference copy. If you really need a reference sheet, you should manually craft a nice reference sheet in MS Word, or HTML5, and print it out. Nothing beats hand-crafted effort, but the low-effort methodologies are still worth knowing.

asciimov 6y ago

Gotta get a laser to see the benefits. I have a recipe binder. When I cook something new, I print it off, If I like it I put it in a plastic sleeve and into the binder. I also like it for printing out instructions when working on my car or building stuff. Last year I replaced the intake manifold on my car with a tune up. It was so nice to have a paper instructions with check list that I could get greasy. Finally, I sometimes print off code to take notes and edit offline, so I can get away from distractions and really think about things.