Posted by: Nathan Willis
on December 14, 2006 11:52 PM
No. SVN, CVS, and all other forms of unreleased code do not qualify for review in a head-to-head app comparison. Why? Because (a) they aren't generally available, (b) they are unstable (in the crash-prone, daily-usage sense), (c) they are unstable in the "any new features/improvements/bigfixes may be rolled back, disappear, or break at any particular time you grab a snapshot" sense, and (d) they are unstable in the "any new features/improvements/bigfixes may be rolled back, disappear, or changed between now and the actual release" sense.
If an app makes substantial improvements that survive until stable release, it will be the released version that deserves a review and/or a place in a head-to-head comparison.
And at that point in time, it will be fair to compare the new version of the app in question with the equivalent, contemporary versions of its competition. You can compare SVN-builds to SVN-builds, or released code to released code, but not SVN-builds to released code. Comparing an unstable build of one app to a stable build of another app is irrelevant.
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Re:did you forget something?
Posted by: Nathan Willis on December 14, 2006 11:52 PMIf an app makes substantial improvements that survive until stable release, it will be the released version that deserves a review and/or a place in a head-to-head comparison.
And at that point in time, it will be fair to compare the new version of the app in question with the equivalent, contemporary versions of its competition. You can compare SVN-builds to SVN-builds, or released code to released code, but not SVN-builds to released code. Comparing an unstable build of one app to a stable build of another app is irrelevant.
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