The Way of Hell

Given this forum is filled with messages simply begging for keys I will instead try to earn one, by attempting to entertain those who posses the ability to give me one.

The Way of Hell. (c)2012 J6R1M

“It has been said that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but its also paved with beta testers and Hell itself contains only the very worst of them.” Unknown Project Manager, circa 1992.

The Three Prime Requisites of a Beta Tester are as follows:
A. Zen (Enlightened Awareness)
B. A thirst for Cruelty
C. Resignation to Karoshi

Part A: Zen (Enlightened Awareness). In Zen to make a proper journey one must value the path and understand the way, not the destination. At heart this is what Steve Jobs meant when he famously remarked “The journey is the reward.”

Within Japanese Manga (literally translated not as 'comics' but 'irresponsible pictures') there is a classic masterpiece, written long before the west became enamoured with Manga.: “Lone Wolf and Cub”. It is a 7000 page journey of blood and vengeance that spawned movies (one known in the west as 'Shogun Assassin'), TV series and sundry rip-offs. It is the story of a Samurai, Ogami Ittō (a slight play on words of 'Wolf Sword') who after his wife is murdered on orders from the Shogun, defies him when ordered to commit ritual suicide and instead becomes ronin (a master-less samurai, sword-for-hire).

However, as a single parent with an infant son, knowing that the Shogun will kill the boy at first opportunity, he if forced to consider not only his own fate, but that of his child as well. Though still only a baby unable to walk or talk, the boy is presented with a choice he should not be able to understand, that of death at the hand of his father to join his mother in the afterlife, or life with his father as ronin. The very heart of Zen is in this tale because his son is still, somehow, able to intuitively grasp the very deepest meaning of the choice his father gives him. The child does not choose the easy path, to die, instead he chooses the harder path, to live, and to travel with his father on the path of Hell. Uncomprehending yet understanding, the deep meaning of the path is still clear before him.

Sadly, unlike baby Daigoro, the would-be beta tester is not the slightest bit aware of the path they so earnestly seek to tread before they begin their own journey to Hell. At the start of the journey the heart of a fresh beta tester is filled with eager wonder and earnest spirit, hope, joy and expectation. Their limbs burst with strength and their mouse-hand quivers with excitement. They feel this way because they see the path before them as bright, filled with sunlight, opportunity and excitement.

However as he walks the path of the beta tester these illusions fall from him one by one. The vast majority simply decide to consider themselves 'beta testers' in the same way a man might consider himself a Kensei (literally 'Sword Saint', a master swordsman of the highest skill) simply because he picks up a dull knife one day and manages to butter a slice of bread without cutting himself. Such beta testers are unworthy of the title, we shall speak of them no more. Most true beta testers never complete the journey and stray from the path, bored or repulsed. Some are broken by the journey... a few are driven insane. For a true beta tester, though many may embark upon the road, few arrive at its final destination, because as they travel the way and their illusions are ripped from them they see it for what it truly is, a journey to Hell.

In short... to comprehend the Way of Hell of the true beta tester one must understand, accept and believe, that to discover a memory leak by selecting and unselecting a single menu option 127 times is a great victory. This is also the way of the samurai, that in life there are no great or small tasks, none more worthy or less worthy than the others, only tasks. This is the Zen and Way of beta testing that must be fully grasped if one intends to fulfil the meaning of the role, but few still live who can do it.

Your Story, It is of the coolest. Bro.

B. A thirst for Cruelty
(Part A: The Early Days)

“The circles of Hell are structured in this way: The Senior Manager Demons stand above all, raining blows and demands on all who rank beneath. Thence project managers, beta testers, graphic artists, senior programmers, programmers and last, the lowest of the low, junior programmers ('hacks' or 'code-monkies')” Unknown Senior Programmer, circa 1996.

To understand why a thirst for cruelty is necessary to a beta tester one must first understand the early history of programming itself, one in which beta testers did not yet exist. It was, in some ways, a programmers garden of Eden, for both beta testers and graphic artists (and their absurd demands for detail that could never be matched to polygon count) were not yet dreamed into existence by the Senior Manager Demons.

A happier and simpler age it was, when program releases were not measured by the likes of Version 1.7.3a, but in terms mere humans could still comprehend, Release 1, Release 2... Release 3. In this era programmers would write and test their own code, finding the bugs themselves they would then correct themselves. This allowed programmers to live in a state of naive contentment... but still tormented brutally by complex coding languages and slow inefficient computer hardware. Sadly this required their minds be warped to almost inhuman levels. It was precisely this very effect, the warping of their minds necessary to code, that gave rise to the notion of “Geek”. Though a humours term it glossed over the reality of those destroyed as they enslaved their minds to the machine in order to operate it. Just as in Fritz Lang's Metropolis, where society was built upon men broken by it, so were applications built upon broken programmers. But I digress somewhat, for this is not about programmers but beta-testers. To understand this early history and contrast it with how things work today, consider this analogy:

A man goes to the toilet. After completing his ablutions he goes to the washbasin to clean himself. As he looks into the mirror he notices that his fly remains undone. In seeing this he dutifully zips it up, leaves the bathroom, and continues on his way. For programmers this was the way of old.

However today it is this: A man goes to the toilet. After completing his ablutions he goes to the washbasin to clean himself. However the mirror that was once upon the wall has been removed. (If the man is old and had used this bathroom before he might wonder where the mirror has gone, however a young man may simply assume things are the way they have always been. There is much of the way of Zen in this notion.) However, regardless of his age, after washing his hands this man then turns around to leave the toilet. It is then that he is confronted by twenty other men staring at him with intense curiosity. As one they look him over, take deep breaths and shout 'YOUR FLY IS OPEN!'

Good stuff! Meat like!

B. A thirst for Cruelty
(Part B: The Creation of the Hell Spawn)

But how was it that the New came to replace the Ways of Old? In early times it became apparent to project managers and senior demons alike that a programmer who checked and remade his own code was inefficient, because if the programmer missed something important the first time around, would he necessarily notice it the second time? Managers reasonably deduced programmers would have a blind spot about their own code. In other words, checking your own fly being open was simply not as efficient as having someone else check it for you. It should be able to be intuitively grasped (even by those not versed in Zen) that even the very idea that someone else might check your own fly made doubly certain you would check it yourself before they did, to avoid personal shame and embarrassment.

Thus was a form of oversight begun on programming. Initially this was simple enough, programmers checked each others code and program operation. A spirit of robust but friendly competition prevailed at this time. However the Senior Manager Demons, creatures of devious intellect and cruel ways, deduced that yet more efficiency could be gained. Why should a senior programmer check the operation of another senior programmers code? Such a thing was more expensive then paying someone of lesser intellect less money to do the same.

Thus, in the transition phase, the task of checking fell to more junior programmers. At this stage it was still believed it was useful for this primordial type of beta-tester (Zen would call them the beta version of beta-testers.) to have at least some knowledge of the back-end of coding. However junior programmers checking the operation of more senior programmers code caused dissension in the ranks, junior coders were labelled by seniors as 'hacks' and 'code-monkies' because they found fault in their code. Senior programmers would steal the code-monkeys daily pizza and shunned them from their cubicles. Hell became most restless. Project Managers, in seeing this and knowing not how to stop it, appealed to the Dukes of Hell for a solution.

Thus it came to pass that within towers of aluminium and glass the Senior Manager Demons of Hell devised a solution of terrible import that would change program development for eternity.

They reached deep into their Bottomless Bag of Torments and disconnected programming from testing. No longer was it necessary (or desired) to understand coding in order to check a programs operation. They dragged forth the first true Beta-Testers from their sack of horrors into the realm of Hell and threw them, shrieking and gibbering, upon the programmers. At site of these vexatious horrors the early programmers, men of twisted mind but stout of heart, had no answer but to flee and cower in the toilets, as the testers pursued them clawing at the door screaming incoherently and unreasonably “When the player avatar pushes the blue barrel it passes too far off the screen by one pixel!... UNACEPTABLE!”

Well played, sir. It appears you have achieved success with this undertaking already but I yet yearn to see more.

"

Aranneas wrote:

Well played, sir. It appears you have achieved success with this undertaking already but I yet yearn to see more.

Well, I will finish this sordid historical tale regardless, and if I end up with a second key I will pass it to my daughter. That may sound selfish but at this stage of what appears a very late beta it would be more useful to have two people logging in from the same home network to talk things over on site and test network performance. As just one more beta tester starting from scratch I am not sure there is much I could ever add that has not already been brought up. Once I get a basic feel for the mechanics and interface I will see if there is a beta-bug list to investigate specific issues... but I doubt I will stumble on any new ones as the games looks very polished.

C. Resignation to Karoshi

Karoshi is a Japanese word and concept that, true to form, the west once again got completely wrong. Translated to English it is literally 'death from overwork', but lacking a Zen heart westerners mistake it for something other than what it is. Witness the game “Karoshi Suicide Salaryman”. Ignoring the rather poor taste of the game concept the idea is simply wrong headed because Karoshi is in no way similar to suicide.

'Karoshi' was also the name of an operating system designed for schools until its name was later changed to the Linux Schools Project. Now, it is quite possible that 'Karoshi' was chosen entirely at random, simply made up, its creators not even knowing of the Japanese term. I don’t personally know. Any parent attempting to create an entirely new and unique name for their child might only go to Google to discover the name is not as unique as they had envisaged. (Indeed it took me 11 years to discover that the supposedly unique name I dreamed up and gave my daughter was not unique at all.... my Zen might have told me it would work out this way... had I listened to it.)

On the other hand anyone even remotely versed in the Zen of early programming knows that Unix and the C language drew programmers to it who were distinctly 'unique' (cough) compared to other operating systems and language users. Linux is the offspring of Unix. It has been said that in the time of The Great Leap Forward (when old programmers versed in C attempted the transition to C++ and Object Oriented Programming) many C die-hards turned away from the Light... in their bitterness even from C itself... to embrace the dark arts of Necromancy and Machine Code. Thus, if an operating system were ever to come into being and be intentionally named 'Karoshi', it might come of little surprise to find Linux as its beating heart.

However as to Karoshi itself, it is probably easiest to simply use the web to reference it:

http://awaveofthehand.blogspot.com.au/2010/10/karoshi.html