The other day, I was going through archives of my past writings of various kinds. Those were stored in bindings and floppy disks, and I read one by one, reminding me of good old days. I found a fresh outlook about myself and it was an envigorating experience.

Among all the writings, I found out the stuff which is about computer and tutorials became useless. It is totally out of time and I was quickly found myself wasting time reading it. When I wrote those, I thought it was worth and was valued by some of my readers. Writings and tutorials about DOS, System III, Xenix, all DOS-based and many MS Windows-based programs are useless thesedays. Pascal codes which I programmed to model very simple geometrical objects took me several months to generate back then. But now that kind of objects can be made in a couple of seconds with a click of the mouse in any graphics programs.

Other than the above-mentioned, all writings on mathematics, languages, history and essays are all refreshing myself even today, but only writings on computer and technical subjects-related topics became useless. It didn't take me much time to decide to throw out those papers into trash can.

Before I emptied trash can, I had contemplated about taking back those computer-related writings, and convinced myself to throw out. As of this writing, I don't regret at all about that.

What I found is scribblings in a piece of paper in my college days is more refreshening and enjoyable than school-work and job-related computer and technical papers which went through many hands in a quite amount of time.

How come? How come those became papers not worth reading it again? I put so much efforts to write it back then. I still make quite an effort to write computer manuals, tutorials and tips. If those are to be useless in several years, why should I bother to write it? I felt some emptiness in my mind for losing papers which I put so much efforts.

I tried to ease my mind saying those were not original enough to survive through even today with this rapidly changing computer technology. I'm pretty sure this writing will last long to remember that incident.

But there's a dilemma here. Should I keep writing on tips and tutorials on computer and technical subjects? Should I put more energy into writing on it knowing that I'll throw it out in a couple of years?

As I believe in and try to practice "Knowledge is there to be shared", I took time writing on technical subjects. After throwing away old technical papers, I became less enthusiastic on writing computer tutorials and tips. (Sep-9-97)