Do you still have your first wooden tools? If not, how did they disappear? Did you sell them? Use them? Or were you a meany-head and threw them to painfully burn in a pit of lava, screaming for mercy, while you simply turned away and crafted a new, better tool? OK, maybe they don't feel pain or scream for mercy, but you get the point; garbage disposals, incinerators, whatever you want to call them are BAD NEWS. Let's say that, to make a full set of wooden tools, you chop down a tree. After your tools are at half durability, you simply toss them onto a cactus and make some new, stone tools. Why didn't you use those tools?
They can't mine coal or better.
So? If you come across coal, iron, etc., simply use your stone pickaxe to harvest the vein, then continue on with your wood pick.
They're slow.
Aww, poor baby can't wait for .354 seconds?
They don't last long enough.
Congrats, silly, you just argued against yourself! If they don't last long, why not use them until they break?
They make me look like a noob.
You MUST be a noob; why else would you craft it?

On with the story. The next day, a new guy joins your server. The tree you WASTED the day before was the only one he'd be able to get within a 1000 block radius (it's a desert, ok?). He can never get far enough to get a tree, and leaves the server 20 minutes later because of YOU! Feel happy now? I hope you don't.

Another thing; I see people running around breaking dirt with STONE SWORDS. Come on, why can't you wait for the .75 seconds it takes to mine dirt by hand? If you really can't wait, make a shovel instead; it'll last twice as long. Use your tools how they're MEANT to be used; don't use a pick on wood, don't use your shovels to break stone, and NEVER, EVER use your flint-and-steels to plow your farmland (trust me, man, it ain't pretty).