The pleasure of beta testing

[mtyas]

I was thinking this morning, of the luck some of us have of being part of a beta testing team.
Not because we have some new toys before anyone else (even if it can amuse me to see all the build up that can happen in these forums), but because we often get to see the evolution of the tools.
My biggest pleasure is to get a new synth with absolutely no presets (and often no documentation).
I know close to nothing in synthesis world, and having to discover everything one by one, and making it all fusion into some kind of logic is very enjoy full.
It's like having some problem too work out. I never got to do any long studies, so learning this way is a great opportunity for me.
So I'd really like to thank some of the great devs around here that put up beta testing sessions of new products. Some get me very excited (like quintosardo's Voices synth) and some leave me totally lost in front of my ignorance (like Octopus, but it's a hell of a great sounding synth)
Thanks again, my future, I owe it to you.

[kritikon]

It's not for me...did the odd bit of beta testing here and there, and TBH, I don't have enough time. It's fun making patches and that type of thing, but all of the saving and resaving, and using function A with function B engaged to see if function C works in all 15 different modes or routing modulation source X to destination Y and checking if all LFOs work or if they don't retrigger under 50 different situations...is tedious.

I think you need an awful lot of patience to beta test properly. Anyway, I've done enough beta testing with all the new versions of Cubase I've bought over the years

[bluedad]

I've done a few things; quite often with my slim knowledge of synthesis, felt left behind as developement went along.
I was brought in to Zebra2 developement and really enjoyed working with it, although I had not much of a clue. Thanks to Urs for being very laid back in his approach.
It was also, almost perverse fun to read Sascha Franks
posting in the beta forums. He was made for it, I believe.

[Meffy]

I too would like to thank the devs here and elsewhere for letting me hammer like a doof on their shiny new toys. Apparently I tend to make the kinds of dumb mistakes that uncover problems that it's better to find and fix sooner rather than later. (Don't always make enough of those dumb mistakes but I try!)

[BONES]

My problem is I am too flexible. If something doesn't work I generally just don't use it or find a workaround. Something has to be pretty seriously wrong before I would think to point it out to anyone. I'm more of a big concept kind of beta guy - "wouldn't it be great if.....".

[DevonB]

I find beta testing to truely be a real pain in the ass, TBH. You've CONSTANTLY have to really pay attention to what you did to trace down bugs in the program, and then be able to articulate well back to the developer on what's wrong, how you crashed the program, how it should be fixed, etc. It also doesn't help that I feel like I'm a beta tester for enterprise level software either that costs tens of thousands of dollars either when we're talking about actual released code.

Yes, it's nice to see new stuff early, but I'm with Kritikon. It's a lot of work for something I hardly have time to do. I also tend to flush out more bugs than most people too, which makes life more difficult.

Devon

[beej]

I quite enjoy it, but it's a *lot* of work to be a meaningful beta tester. You need to have the same atention to detail and understanding as a developer (developers make good beta testers because of this), at the same time you have to be able to act like a non-technical average user (developers make bad beta testers because of this).

You have to exhaustively test software that is getting ever more complex, know how to troubleshoot, isolate and document fully to provide useful feedback.

It's for this reason that I will only volunteer to beta a product I have a vested interest in that will reward my efforts, and only if I realistically have time to commit to the project.

But it's certainly enjoyable to be involved in the evolutionary process of bringing a new entity in the world...

[The Chase]

One thing that pisses me off is when you are beta testing, and the developer sends like 20 updates to the software during your testing time...

[Kingston]

I think the best part in beta/alpha testing is contribution. I suppose that it is completely up to the developer, but the ones I've worked with are open to suggestions if the ideas are well articulated and justified.