Let’s go swimming

You probably love swimming and would like to go for a swim everyday. To get into the daily habit of swimming, you enrol in the swimming club closest to your home. It has 4 clean pools, each with 7 swim lanes. A swimming club is super convenient. The club constructs the pools, maintains the cleanliness and ensures the safety standards. It may also provide other specialised services like a dedicated swimming coach. You don’t have to worry about the details. You just need to pay the monthly fees for your right to entry to the pool and then show up everyday.

But of late, you have been finding the club annoying and counter-productive to your habit. They have been continuously hiking the monthly fees and you feel the pinch. They have been constantly introducing new rules, such as maintaining seperate timings for males and females. Only one of the two genders is allowed at a time. They have been constantly playing with their opening and closing timings and also the timings at which different genders are allowed. You suddenly find that the swimming club’s timings and your work timings clash and that the swimming club is not open to your gender when you are free from work. Suddenly, they have declared a day off every Sunday since their staff wants it. You also hear some stories about spy cams placed in their dressing rooms and videos being uploaded, a clear security breach. The pools have been getting too crowded recently and there are people not following swim lanes. They swim across you and cut you off while you are in the middle of a lap. Continue reading “3rd party or self-hosted? Part 1: The basics”