CompuServe Messages

Autodesk multimedia developers can easily secure beta versions of 3DS, of course… and in this case, the Garden routines are developed and/or supervised by the same people who were working on the next revision. They certainly had access to the betas. As a fellow software developer, I'm completely sympathetic to an unspotted bug. It's tough. Yes, there are complete disciplines and careers devoted to finding bugs and "quality assurance", but few software companies can devote as much effort and personnel to this task as many users might demand. There are a number of similar scenerios that might crop up in the future… Hordes of users might complain that R4/5/N, etc. stopped working with a half-dozen company's IPAS routines. Of course it's a "good thing" that IPAS is improved, but that necessarily will break old software. I don't think it's Autodesk's responsibility to test and debug everyone else's IPAS routines, yet with only beta-quality pre-release versions of R4/5/N, how can a third party reliably debug the interface? It isn't "final" until it ships, and then some. Someday, I'm sure that third-party developers will complain that it's "unfair" that any IPAS interface enhancements to R4, R5, etc. will be documented and exploited by the Yost Group before anyone else, simply because the new spec remains undocumented until well past the release. On the other hand, it's good that a company with a real stake in IPAS is developing real-world routines with any new spec, as opposed to a company handing down a relatively untested interface. Allowing add-ons is a two-edged sword! Look at AutoCAD. Someday, Autodesk might start bundling IPAS routines that compete directly with the hard-won efforts of loyal third-party developers, and more toes will be stepped on.