CompuServe Messages

I would agree with much of what you say, and I'm sure your beta testers do a good job … but the psychology of beta testing is a complex one, and you should make sure that your beta-testers are not too closely involved with the product. Also, most beta-testers get "tired" with a product after a while, eventually only finding major bugs and lulling software houses into a false sense of security. With due respect, someone working for S-L, or who is intimately involved with a product, as you are, does not make a good tester. You will almost certainly be doing things "correctly", have the right configuration and will press all the keys in more or less the right order. You might know some of the likely pitfalls in the program, and spend time exercising them, but you are unlikely to find the bugs that will hit the novice user. I have been beta-testing major products now for many years … over the past year, it accounts for much of what I do with my Amiga. I am currently testing 4 major software releases … 2 now released, 2 to come … and I periodically rest from the products so that I don't get to know them too well. When I go back, I'm really disappointed if I discover less than a dozen bugs! Certainly, trying to test on every possible combination of h/w is well-nigh impossible (and for that reason, I assume you choose your beta-testers carefully) and, even once a bug has been found, debugging is also very tricky. The only bugs I report on commercial software are those which are causing me grief (like the fact that PageStream crashes when using some perfectly legal Type-1 fonts … it falls over with some "seac" commands in these Type-1 fonts … I've reported this to S-L before, but they seem to have taken no notice … as you know I've reported it again … I hope S-L takes its beta-testers more seriously). Mike (Whapping from the UK)