THE END

 

It was with long thought and deep consideration that I made the decision to end the Swimming Rank website.

The reason why I chose to end Swimming Rank is that my life has changed as three things have recently happened:

1)     I recently turned 60 years old.

2)     My children have all graduated from college and are no longer competively swimming.

3)     I have retired from my regular job.

For the past 15 years, Swimming has been a large part of my life. Running the Swimming Rank website takes a lot of time. I find that with the recent changes in my life, I want to do something else, while I am still healthy and active.

The swimming information landscape has changed a lot since I started Swimming Rank. There are now a lot of places on the Internet to get swimming information. I am sure that there will be websites and apps that will pop up to take the place of Swimming Rank

For those of you who are wondering why I don't sell or hand off Swimming Rank to someone else, it is because the software that runs the website is not well designed. I am not a professional programmer and the Swimming Rank website is cobbled together with what is known as 'spaghetti code'. Even I cannot go into the software code to make changes without spending days figuring out how things work. Often times, I ended up writing software code on top of the existing software code so I don't break anything, which only makes the situation worse. It is trying to maintain the software for the website that is the hardest and most time consuming task. It would be impossible for someone else to take over.

I want to thank everyone for their support over the years. I have made many friends and have had many experiences that I will treasure through swimming. Swimming Rank brought me closer to my children and gave me something to do while I watch them compete. But it is time to move on.