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.