I work on High volume Medical Laboratory automation and analyzers. By High Volume I mean 20,000 samples a day with multiple tests run on each sample at one particular account.
We have hardware and software upgrades all the time. Especially on new products.
Our software is never released with the term “Beta” on it. But my coworker and I think of it as Beta (or even “Vapor ware”) when it‘s first released.
The issue we run into is that we get pressure to install the new software soon after its released because we’re at a “high profile account”. But we don’t want to induce issues that cause our customers (the Lab) and ourselves greaf. So we hold off as long as we can get away with to see if anyone else is having major issues before installing it.
I’m new to Fractal Land (and modeling) but I‘m cautious about installing anything Beta as I don’t need the potential hassle involved with glitches...
Unless you're earning mega bucks with a modeler then your use of it isn't high pressure, and a problem with a beta version would be an annoyance that could be fixed in ten minutes or less by rolling back to the previous version. The use of beta on the modeler is nothing in comparison with the jobs many of us had or have in our daily lives managing big projects or wrangling code; We laugh at the challenge.
Fractal is a small company, but I believe they're as good of programmers and engineers as I've ever seen, because they have passion and major experience. Dig through the catacombs and notice how long their members have been here, especially those who poke their heads into the forms. They're veterans and know their system.
Alpha, beta, "golden" or release-candidate are standard terms in development. Every company writing software has to follow some sort of revision and release process and odds are really good they'll be those terms. They're not about to let general public in on anything before a public-beta, which, at that point, they need multiple eyes on the product to ferret out the bugs they've missed during the alpha and private-beta phases. So, public-beta is pretty safe - it won't eat your lunch or steal your good liquor.
If you don't feel safe, don't jump into the pool, wait for the final-beta or the general release. Nobody pressures anyone to partake, and it's a disservice to Fractal for those who are not capable or unwilling to actually play with it, because they muddy the water with comments and unresearched "issues" that were previously reported multiple times and that turned out to be user error because they didn't read the release notes or closely track the thread.
It's a fun trip helping debug this stuff, and everyone is welcome, at least until they prove they can't hang with the old farts on the porch.
