Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 20:59:27 04/23/02
Go up one level in this thread
On April 23, 2002 at 12:56:11, Roy Eassa wrote:
>On April 23, 2002 at 12:50:24, Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote:
>
>>On April 23, 2002 at 12:43:26, Roy Eassa wrote:
>>
>>>>What about the _beta_ testers?
>>>>
>>>>They report such results here all the time.
>>>
>>>
>>>I don't recall having seen ANY beta test reports regarding the strength or
>>>results of Chess Tiger 15, but I'll admit my memory is not 100%. :-)
>>
>>Maybe because they're not allowed :)
>>
>>Not reporting results != not doing testing
>>
>
>
>You're right. That's what I figured. But I find it a bit curious that
>Christophe seemed to go out of his way to imply that results against top
>competitors (e.g., Fritz 7) are NOT a factor in his decision of when to release
>each successive version of Tiger. Rather, he implied, he has his own set of
>benchmarks that tell him when it's ready.
>
>If the above is true, it means that coming out after Fritz 7 does not imply
>being stronger than Fritz 7 (which is the statement I was addressing
>originally).
>
>Software beta testers usually focus on finding bugs. It's inevitable in
>computer chess that they would also test strength/results, but I suspect that's
>not what Christophe wants them to focus on.
I don't test against my competitors and what the beta testers report is
generally not about what the competitors do.
I don't remember any occurence of a change I would have made because a beta
tester would have reported a problem against a given competitor. Maybe it
happened, but it is not frequent and not really important when compared to all
the other things I do.
Anyway when the beta test stage starts, the program is almost freezed and I
don't make changes, just bug fixes.
For me it is a race against the competition, but a blind one. I do not know
where my competitors are until the program is released. A few months after the
release I get some measure of where I stand, then I go back in "blind" mode
until the next release.
Believe it or not.
Christophe
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