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Which are familiar? The 7 that are listed?
So are you saying that these terms are recent definitions? Let's say as recent as 5 years? 10 years?Until software firms started to allow pre-release software into the wild I had never heard the terms alpha and beta used to define a program's development state.
@HipsieGypsie
Great research!
Alpha/Beta are more of externally visual release cycle terms.
While xxx-testing (Unit- etc...) is internal code structure testing, starting from the simplest code block input/output values to a full fledged system with multiple applications talking to each other. Only developers or users really close to the developers and access to full documentations and specifications should be involved in those. Most of the tests are automated tests written in code, but some can only be done manually or is very difficult to implement in code.
A few remarks
1) For whatever reason, the buildfeed.net is down right now. When it comes back up the latest canary will be what they are considering.
2) Perhaps the question could be raised at the next Insider broadcast on I believe the 13th. What Dona is describing as "self-host tests" would seem to be the "scientific" testing people are talking about. What, besides automated stress tests, this entails it "might" be possible to teases out of them - but I doubt it.
At least 20 years old terms. (this is as far as I can remember) But those terms became more common when programmers and companies started to emphasise the importance of unit testing and multitasking operating systems became a norm.
Edit: Alpha and Beta has existed at least since 30 years ago. (can't remember longer than that)
Here is a very over simplified Unit-test:
And here is the actual code to be tested:Code:int valueA = 1; int valueB = 3; int expectedResult = 4; bool SumReturnsCorrectResult(int valueA, int valueB, int expectedResult) { int actualResult = Sum(valueA, valueB); return Assert(expectedResult, actualResult); }
The function SumReturnsCorrectResult will return TRUE in this case.Code:int Sum(int A, int B) { return A + B; }