Announcing Windows 10 Insider Preview Fast+Skip Build 17046 for PC Insider

slicendice said:

Since you must be older than me and having a much better memory than me, I believe you. Those years I was not even thought of yet.

I cannot say of my memory is better than yours but I certainly remember terms alpha and beta and it almost certainly goes back to early mainframe days in late 50s.

HippsieGypsie said:

I see what you're saying. Should be two separate descriptions of the stages that software development is in vs testing level.

I repeat alpha has always meant early preview version, warts and all. Beta has always meant a pre-release version which is in final bug testing phase ie nearly ready for release. The terms mean a state of PERCEIVED readiness, not directly related to testing but of course, testing assesses how accurate the PERCEIVED state is.

In the end it is just semantics.

An interesting quote from an overly long article.....

Testing cannot establish that product functions properly under all conditions but can establish only that it does not function properly under specific conditions.

Software testing - Wikipedia

cereberus said:

I repeat alpha has always meant early preview version, warts and all. Beta has always meant a pre-release version which is in final bug testing phase ie nearly ready for release. The terms mean a state of PERCEIVED readiness, not directly related to testing but of course, testing assesses how accurate the PERCEIVED state is.

In the end it is just semantics.

Exactly.

f14tomcat said:

An interesting quote from an overly long article.....

Testing cannot establish that product functions properly under all conditions but can establish only that it does not function properly under specific conditions.

Software testing - Wikipedia

There has been simple code that has been "tested" mathematically and proved to work but the complexity of real world code makes that impossible. There are just too many combinations of conditions. Software development is always looking for ways to reduce that complexity.

I've had it with all the alpha and beta releases. How about an omega release

DooGie said:

I've had it with all the alpha and beta releases. How about an omega release

W10 is the "last Windows" as Microsoft has announced, and Ω (Omega) is the last letter of Greek alphabet, therefore isn't any public release version of Windows 10 "the omega release", current Ω being v. 1709?

kado897 said:

There has been simple code that has been "tested" mathematically and proved to work but the complexity of real world code makes that impossible. There are just too many combinations of conditions. Software development is always looking for ways to reduce that complexity.

One thing that never changes about programming is the more structured a program is the more it is easier to test its robustness. Anybody can make a small 10 line program robust but POTENTIAL for bugs increases non linearly with size (in an exponential manner). Good techniques suppress exponential rise (e^-ax where a=(say) 1 by reducing sensitivity making a<1.

But no matter what anybody does, it is impossible to stop number of potential bug combinations rapidly approaching infinity from a practical viewpoint ie time to fix is beyond practical timescales.

This is why I laugh when people say MS should test more before releasing something. Even if they do a magnificent job reducing bugs by a factor of 100, 1% of a very large number is still a very large number.

All one can do in realistic terms is test the most common and likely perceived scenarios, working on basis obscure bugs are statistically much less likely. But when you are talking about 600 million users on 600 million different combinations of pc and software, and completely different usage patterns, it does not take much cranial capacity to realise how impossible a tsk is really being faced.

In fact, if you really think about it, it is remarkable how well MS do in reality.

Kari said:

W10 is the "last Windows" as Microsoft has announced, and Ω (Omega) is the last letter of Greek alphabet, therefore isn't any public release version of Windows 10 "the omega release", current Ω being v. 1709?

I did post it tongue in cheek Kari.