Fruit Machines... Kind of a dev rant, I mean, they have software running them now, but my gripe is the hardware (I think).

Any of you that frequent pubs and use fruit machines notice that many of the LEDs are "broken" / "non functioning" lately? I mean it's rare I see one that doesn't have lights that are out, rendering the entire machine useless, yet it still takes your money.

Intentionally made to break? Or are LEDs really that difficult to get right? Or maybe it's software determining which ones to appear "broken" and there is a way reset it?

It's a rant none the less...

So I've been a professional software developer in variously named roles over the years since I was 18, now 35. I've had many ideas for my own projects over the years some great, some not so great, and as with most ideas, if you don't act on them, someone else will suddenly come up with it, which is frustrating as hell obviously. Anyway, I never find enough time to do these things in what little free time I have, so the idea of stopping working for someone else and work on my own stuff seems almost unobtainable. I've worked with companies (startups) that have had ideas that have never made anything significant but still keep going on investor money for some reason or another. I realise my question is quite vague, but how the fuck do you break away and do your own stuff? Time is running out (at least in my mind), anyone here actually done it, succeeded, failed?? Can't be writing other people's badly designed software my whole life, would be nice to design my own and see it through.

I fix antique code for a living and regularly come across code like this, and this is actually the good stuff!

Worst usecase for a goto statement? What do you think?

  int sDDIO::recvCount(int bitNumber){

  if (bitNumber < 0 || bitNumber > 15) return 0;   //ValidatebitNumber which has to be 0-15

  //Send count request

  if (!(send(String::Format(L"#{0:X2}{1}\r", id, bitNumber)) && flushTx())){

bad:   //Return 0 if something went wrong

  return 0;

}

  String^ s = recv(L"\r");   //Receive request data

  if (s->Length != 9) goto bad;   //Validate lenght

s = s->Substring(3, 5);   //Take only relevant bits

 

  int value;   //Try to parse value and send to bad if fails

  bool result = Int32::TryParse(s, value);

  if (!result) goto bad;

 

  int count = value - _lastCount[bitNumber];   //Maximumpossible count on Moxa is 65535.

  if (count < 0) count += 65536;   //If the limit reached, the counter resets to 0

_lastCount[bitNumber] = value;   //This avoids loosing count if the 1st request was

  //made at 65530 and the 2nd request was made at 5

  return count;

}