Also, how many 'RELEASED' programs have problems?
*All* of them do. Except for trivial programs, there is no such thing as
perfection in writing and releasing programs. Programs are released when the
company releasing them are confident that the great bulk of their major
problems have been found and corrected. Often they release when there are
remaining problems that have been identified, but are difficult to fix and
are not serious or would occur extremely seldom.
And always, when a major software product is released, additional problems
show up later in its lifetime. Once again, perfection with complex software
does not exist, and if a manufacturer tried to achieve it, he would test and
fix forever and never be ready to release. So avoiding beta versions of
software is not the same as looking for perfection; what it is is looking
for the software's manufacturer to be confident that all major problems have
been found and fixed.
Note that whether you should rely on the manufacturer to do a good job of
such identification and confidence depends on what manufacturer it is. All
software manufacturers are not equally good at recognizing when all major
problems have been found and fixed. That's one of the reasons why some some
manufacturers products are better than other. It's one of the reasons why
products like Norton anti-virus should be avoided.
Once again, this has nothing to do with fear. It has to do with
understanding how the software development process works (I spent many years
in software development myself) and understanding what the risks of problems
are in the different stages of the development process.
I do.
