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Subject: Re: Dangers in CC - The Mania of Free Products

Author: Uri Blass

Date: 12:12:56 02/24/03

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On February 24, 2003 at 14:21:00, Peter Berger wrote:

>On February 24, 2003 at 14:05:21, Uri Blass wrote:
>
>>On February 24, 2003 at 13:37:50, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>
>>>3.  The pros are much more organized in testing, and have multiple machines
>>>dedicated
>>>to playing programs, with a person or persons responsible for looking at the
>>>games played
>>>to see what is going on...
>>
>>I have no data to prove that theory and I believe that top amateurs also get a
>>lot of machine time by beta testers.
>>
>>Uri
>
>I agree that top amateur engines probably get quite a lot of machine time by
>beta testers aka users, too.
>
>But there is a major difference to professionals IMHO - they don't really _get_
>the time, decisions what to test or how to test are usually done by the users
>themselves and the testing is in most cases not organized. Users test what they
>find interesting, with settings that they are most interested in etc. etc.
>
>That's logical as for the beta-testers the testing is a hobby, too, not a job or
>an organized project.
>
>But to draw any useful conclusions from the data is very difficult for a
>programmer IMHO, even if the beta-testers test very carefully.
>
>Decide for yourself - what would you prefer? 6 computers donated to you to test
>movei on your own, or 10 betatesters who run testmatches with movei as they see
>fit?
>
>I think beta-testing of amateur engines doesn't suffer from too little
>enthusiasm of the testers, but I am sure professional engines are tested in a
>much more "scientific" and better organized way.
>
>Peter

I do not know how you can be sure about it.
I believe that there are testers that do exactly what the programmers ask them
to do.

The commercial programs may have problems to get beta testers

I Remeber a case when Millenium went to court against a beta tester because they
did not like things that the tester wrote about shredder.

Uri



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