Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 10:54:04 11/22/00
Go up one level in this thread
On November 22, 2000 at 11:05:36, Fernando Villegas wrote: >Just a simple question: if Rebel Tiger cannot mate with bishop and knight, as >has been said here and nobody has rejected that statement, what kind of work >beta testers did? Or maybe I am mistaken about what a beta tester does? I >supposed that it is a heavy work, a systematic effort to grasp problems. Now it >seems to me it is not so, at least not always. It seems more or less as a review >where you play the program and from time to time you write a note or two about >the Gui or something than can appear during the game. So if not bishop+knight >situation appears, the problems is not grasped. In fact, that kind of endings >are very rare, but then, if beta testing is just to look at just what appears, I >wonder which is the difference between betatesting and toying. >I have never offered myself to beta testing nothing because precisely of that: I >have no time not the desire to do such a heavy effort in detail. Sometimes in >the past I have reviewed programs -programs that I have bought- and I did that >in confessed subjetive terms, so everyone has been free to take it as a >entertaiment or as some kind of light info, but of course nobody, never, thought >I was doing a full job of the kind K.K - Alan Tomalty- did. >So my point is: please, do not engage in such comitments unless you are prepared >to go to the end. Do not do that because I put my faith in what you test, other >people put his faith also and so decisions are taken because we think "well, all >these enthusiastic beta tester cannot be wrong". >Just a last thing: I do not say this from a disppointment with Rebel Tiger. I >like it very much and I am sure that anyway Theron will deliver a patch long >before I ever reach an ending of that kind: in fact it will never happen because >I always surrender with just one pawn less. My disappointment is with my fellows >here, specially with those that sometimes make his comments from the highness of >his status as beta testers but then, out of the blue, facts show thet did not >perform the work as was due to be done. >Sorry if I hurt somebody. All this is writen under the premise B+N mates are not >in Tiger capabilities by now. >Fernando I have beta tested lots of hardware and software (no, not chess programs). In every case, I was given a specific set of things to try, to test, to play with, etc. And then a set of specific questions I had to answer, plus room for any other comments I had. The alternative is just to give somebody a copy of something, say "use this for a while and let me know what you think." You certainly get less info back that way. But it takes less effort on both sides as well. Formulating a beta test plan, distributing the program, getting the results, analyzing them, turns into a 'project'... I don't think chess engine authors do this sort of detailed plan at all...
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