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Are Betas Taking On Lives of Their Own?
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun Feb 13, 2005 03:13 AM
from the night-of-the-living-beta dept.
from the night-of-the-living-beta dept.
Ant writes "CNET News.com's Paul Festa thinks the final stage of software development, beta versions, are taking on a life of their own, as companies tinker endlessly with their products in public according to a recent article. Google is one of the companies that keep using "beta" term for years for its products."
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agreed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:agreed (Score:3, Funny)
GMail (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:GMail (Score:3, Interesting)
They also added pop3 support.
Define forever and how long it should take to roll new features out to the public using the proper development cycle of design, coding, testing and release?
Re:GMail (Score:3, Informative)
The answer. (Score:5, Insightful)
Beta prevents the need for support but allows you to sell/release your product. This is a dream as it prevents those damn leeches called "consumers" from harassing them.
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Re:GMail (Score:3, Interesting)
Just a thought.
Re:GMail (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:GMail (Score:4, Interesting)
Not many are coming to mind tbh, and I cant' seem to find a list of updates.. They added thumbnails to emails with picture attachments, they added external POP3 access, they've improved the contacts manager, they fixed up that nasty bug (which shouldn't have really been there anyway for someone like Google) where memory could be read by missing a closing tag in the To (or wad it From?) field. There's the GMail notifier and other things I cant remember at present. I can say I'm happy with the progress they're making, considering it was a good service beforehand, and there will be god knows how many bug fixes and things we won't notice. Being in Beta is a sensible idea, they aren't as pressured to be perfect and it's not finished. If they released it fully now and people found bugs or errors it wouldnt look very good, if they wait, the majority of people wont notice, and they have an excuse. Beta is the programmers heaven
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Re:GMail (Score:3, Insightful)
Hmmm, if everyone who wants an account has one, why do they have the 'invite' system? Why not just let everyone sign up and take it out of 'beta'? I personally can't get an account, and by the sounds of things I don't want one, I don't like the idea of some corporation spying on my entire e-mail history. Also it doesn't really seem to offer anything over the other webmail systems.
it's probably some smart marke
Re:GMail (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:GMail (Score:3, Informative)
IMO, it works better then captchas for ensuring _humans_ open accounts. I personally can't get an account, Just email me (or anybody else with a gmail account), and you'll get an invite. You don't have to use it forever, just try it.
Re:GMail (Score:3, Insightful)
God I hate that (Score:5, Insightful)
In other news... (Score:2, Funny)
As ICQ counted down the seconds to release "in 3..2..1" ardent enemies postpone event by screaming "I call bullshit." No word yet on whether the popular chat software will ever be officially released or whether proc6's head has exploded from this offensive post.
More news at 5:00.
In an hour (Score:5, Funny)
This is not my final post.... (Score:2, Funny)
Perpetual beta sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, we have the new perpetual beta. Any company can, with a wave of the magic wand, make itself blameless when its software doesn't work. "But it's in beta!" they gleefully shout when you tell them about something that doesn't work correctly. "Refer it to our testing team, who will ignore your report."
Re:Perpetual beta sucks (Score:3, Interesting)
Fear of commitment (Score:5, Insightful)
Once you make the jump to release versions then suddenly everything has to run (nearly) perfectly and any issues need to be properly dealt with. Perpetual beta has it's advantages in that you simple don't deal with these problems. Or you don't deal with them formally, but you do fix them.
Google News is stuck in beta because Google can and will be sued the instant they start trying to make money (via text ads or something) off other sites headlines and stories.
Syndication (Score:3, Informative)
Similar deals could prevent lawsuits: News sites who want to get linked to would have to agree not to sue for copyright infringement when Google summarizes their stories. (I'm referrring only to Google News itself, of course: Cutting a deal with a search engine shouldn't affect a site's rank
Would you rather they release it as final? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Would you rather they release it as final? (Score:3, Interesting)
Product release cycles are well understood. Modern computer programs are too complex (and, occasionally, market-driven) to get 100% right on the first go. So, the reasonable expectation is to expect a release followed by patches that fix issues that are discovered in due course.
Since this applies to virtually all software, either built by "incompetent" microsoft or (in analogue) "r
Re:Would you rather they release it as final? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Beta" is just a word, and Google is using it to play the "Underpromise and Overdeliver" game.
Parent
Google is a bad example (Score:2, Insightful)
Google's different (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Google's different (Score:3, Insightful)
they're EVEN WORSE.
pretending that it's invite only for example - when in reality _everyone_ can have an invite(and they want everyone to have, viral marketing).
*biggest problem with open source* (Score:2)
I myself am guilty of this, having written a fairly ingenious program that compresses the N64 rom set by about 60% (compressors likw zip/winrar only seem to get about 15%). After which I never really got it polished enough for the average joe to use.
Of Course! (Score:2, Funny)
Microsoft has done the opposite (Score:3, Funny)
You can't claim the other way around doesn't work either.
Microsoft has been shipping beta-quality products as "Final Release" for years and they've done sooo well for themselves!
P.S. I don't really think so, it's just a joke.
Re:Microsoft has done the opposite (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Microsoft has done the opposite (Score:4, Insightful)
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Does anyone know what beta means anymore? (Score:5, Insightful)
and
What little training I had seemed to involve code existing in four stages of development, and beta was the second:
Alpha: the phase in the development cycle where code first comes into being. Subsystems are being built, and testing takes place on the that (subsystem) level.
Beta: the phase in the cycle where all subsystems are nominally in place, and testing occurs on the system level; not everything works, and features may be added, but we're looking at the whole code.
Final: features are locked down, the system is tested in the form it intends to be released. I believe, under the influence of someone like Microsoft, this is now referred to as "Release Candidate" stage.
Released: The software has been distributed.
On the other hand, this article implies another notion of software development stages, one that I see applied rather frequently:
Alpha: Testing done in house.
Beta: Product released to a group of testers who aren't in-house QA specialists.
So does someone have the answer? What the hell do these terms mean, and are they useful any more?
Re:Does anyone know what beta means anymore? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've always had a (slightly) different definition (and number of letters) for the various "greek letter" status elements (which I use in my Open Source project, the jSyncManager [jsyncmanager.org]):
The problem I run into isn't the never-ending beta -- it's the never-ending alpha stage :P. A big part of this tends to have to do with trying to fit in user requests for enhancement, and simply not having the time nor manpower to get it all done in a timely manner (as we're not a project that attracts a lot of developers willing to contribute to the core). Our beta phases tend to be fairly short, in large part because once we hit beta, we've typically hit a feature freeze as well, and are only going to fix bugs.
IMO, if it's not feature complete, you have no right calling it a "beta", as much of your high-level testing is going to be useless if you're going to be adding code during the beta phase. Adding new features effectively "resets" the status back to the beginning of "beta" -- making the term effectively meaningless.
But I guess I'm just old fashioned that way...
Yaz.
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Not many, apparently :-( (Score:3, Insightful)
It used to be much simpler than that, with just three pretty clear phases for testing and QA.
Obviously you start with your in-house testing, hopefully a constant background activity as you write new code. This is just routine development activity, and might include unit testing, regression testing, and more. A lot of this will be done locally on specific areas of the software.
As you reach the end of the new feature development for your coming release, you bring everything together to build a complete ve
Lower expectations (Score:3, Insightful)
It's so very modern
Mac OS X 10.0 (Score:3, Interesting)
All has been forgiven since then, though.
Contractual? (Score:3, Interesting)
The good 'ol days... (Score:5, Interesting)
1/ Overuse of betas will lead to a diminishing of the meaning of beta. Favorite examples would be ICQ and Firefox. I used Firefox since 0.6, and it's worked beautifully for me ever since. But *despite the fact that it worked fine enough to serve as my primary browser*, it was considered beta. As more and more people discover this little fact that "beta doesn't really mean beta" then its meaning will diminish. Next thing we know, we'll be talking about long alpha periods.
2/ The versioning system is supposed to give people a good idea of what kinds of changes there have been. The use of beta names diminishes and distorts that. Once again, I return to Firefox. The amount of changes made between 0.6 and 1.0 of FF is tremendous. Based on what is seen on paper, it was more substantial than what 1.0->1.5 would be. With perpetual betas, people have that magical 1.0 barrier that they can't break. So there is a compression and thus distortion of version numbering.
3/ It's a cute new way to push aside blame. Well, it's a beta product, so if it's broke, it's not our fault. Of course, there are time when this *should* have been used (and not used), like Netscape 6. But it's being overused.
4/ This is just pure nostalgia, but I miss the good old days when version numbers would leap ahead and people would be in anticipation of exciting new features. Now, version numbers creep from beta1 to beta2 to beta3 and while there are still cool and exciting changes, they seem marginalized.
I strongly believe that betas should be used for things that are legitimately under development. As soon as it's stable enough that the developer would feel comfortable with using it on a regular basis without it completely blowing up, it's 1.0. Save the perfection and endless tweaking and bugfixing for 1.1 or 2.0; I have yet to see a perfect 1.0, even if eons of time have been funneled into perfection.
True, but not a disaster. (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree that "beta" no longer means what it used to. I remember when you had to be someone special to get a beta version of a program, back when my friends would come over and say, "Guess what I managed to get my hands on?" and they'd be waving around a beta version of some popular product and we'd all go, "Wow, how did you manage that?"
However, I also remember the days when a "syndicated" television program meant network reruns. A show that was original in syndication would have confused everyone.
So alth
So Long As It's Not Being Sold... (Score:3, Insightful)
the changing definitions of words (Score:5, Interesting)
to the general public, a hacker is tantamount to an online terrorist, period
to a computer scientist, p2p is an evolving paradigm, where everything from spare processor cycles to segments of larger files that can be reassembled on the fly can be traded to amplify the power of the internet
to the general public, p2p is where you get free music, period
to a computer scientist, beta connotes a program that isn't ready for final release yet
to the general public, beta connotes an offering from a large computer company/ gateway portal that is just unsupported
now some may see these changing word definitions as some sort of repugnant dumbing down of vital concepts, concepts important to areas of endeavour that some care passionately about, and they resent it
but i assert, from the standpoint of a realist, that since the internet is a phenomenon whose impact reaches beyond the realm of ivory tower computer scientists, such a dumbing down effect of certain terms previously secluded to the realm of computer science is just inevitable, unavoidable, and shouldn't be a reason for any reaction except a rolling of the eyes and maybe some laughter
all words evolve in terms of meaning and usage over time, and computer scientists, even if they invented the terminology, don't own word definitions
Re:the changing definitions of words (Score:3, Informative)
to a computer scientist, a hacker is someone who tinkers with access to a supposedly secure system
Hehe, it appears the word's meaning has been so lost and distorted that even those who would defend it and correct its misuse are confused.
The Jargon File defines hacker [catb.org] thoroughly for those who really want to know what it means. Or what it meant, anyway, before it escaped the obscurity of hackerdom and entered mainstream use as a label for someone who breaks into computer systems.
Et tu Slashdot? (Score:4, Funny)
http://developers.slashdot.org/faq/com-mod.shtml#
^_^
Beta = Feature Freeze (Score:3)
Delta - Very early development. Planning phase.
Alpha - Still adding features. Doing basic testing.
Beta - Features frozen. Only fixing bugs. Lots of heavy testing.
Doesn't this mean anything to anyone any more?
Oh Thank God.... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This makes the term meaningless. (Score:3, Insightful)
all neat tools but Google hasn't really decided whether or not any of those projects merit the full force of
Google behind them, but it costs Google next to nothing to provide them on their site.
Apple does the same thing. Quicktime Broadcaster is beta.. hell, Apple has called it "a technology example" not
a finished product.
The question becomes, would you rather companies not release their litt
Re:This makes the term meaningless. (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a reason NASA doesn't send the latest "working" laptops up to the space station, it's because you can only say something is "rock solid" after very extensive testing.
My gmail account isn't any better or worse that it would have been, it's just I know not to run anything mission critical off it.
More things should be in beta, there are too many things that claim to be rock solid that aren't.
At the same time, I don't condone the abuse of "beta" to av
Re:This makes the term meaningless. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:In my mind: (Score:4, Insightful)
Having said that, I haven't ever had slashdot render incorrectly in firefox.
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