Getting back to writing code again

Finishing my book is sucking the life out of me, because I just can't seem to stay focused enough to bang out the last few chapters. They aren't even chapters that require research, it's stuff I feel I know well enough to just go at it.

So yesterday I took a break from it to write code. I don't have any other projects right now, so I thought it would be fun to just work on something I want to work on. I looked at stuff I started but never finished, and settled on the ad serving software I wrote.

I wrote the serving half two years ago, and it has since served millions of impressions. Looking back at the code, it sure did suck. I'm amazed at how you never quite look back fondly at code that you wrote. It can always be better.

I killed it all and started writing it from scratch. The algorithm for serving was great, and included session and frequency capping and all of that. It was just horrible organization, and I never did write any UI for it. I got lucky in that no client was ever smart enough to ask for reporting capabilities.

I'm stoked with what I started to pull together, and I think I might sell it or give it away or something. Looking at what's out there, people are getting away with murder charging hundreds for what amounts to a couple hundred lines of code. I need some of that action!