You’ve seen those Microsoft ads that say “Windows 7 was my idea,” yes?
Well, this is sort of like that. Rose Point’s Coastal Explorer 2010 beta is ready to go, thanks to me.
See, I asked the folks at Rose Point about the beta yesterday, and was told I could download it, but they weren’t ready to release it generally because of an intermittent and unpredictable bug that caused the program to crash.
The big problem was that Brad Christian and his crew at Rose Point were unable to reproduce the bug—which is a lot like when you take your car into the shop but it won’t do the bad thing while the mechanic’s looking at it. When the problem doesn’t occur, it’s extremely difficult to diagnose it!
So I downloaded the beta, and guess what? It crashed. I offered to bring the laptop into Rose Point’s office so they could see the crash, and Brad accepted my offer with obvious enthusiasm.
Here he is, running his debugger on my laptop while the beta crashes.
Witness the arcane mystery that is software development! Look at the concentration! Observe the dedication to quality! 
Anyway, he found the bug, and as anticipated, fixing it required a change to one single line of code…ain’t that always the way?
So the Rose Point Coastal Explorer 2010 beta is now ready to go, and we should expect an official announcement anytime now. You’re welcome.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Hi Tim,
Well done mate! Probably wouldnt have got it without you.
Oddly enough my crashes stopped after the last release…but dunno why.
Ive looked and looked but couldnt find the answer.
Looks like it needed a machine doing the nasty to find it.
Brad really needs to get himself some UK distribution for CE 2010
It will go down a storm here.
Cheers
Steve
You would have made a great tester!
Great save! And I commend your willingness to risk your laptop. Now keeping my fingers crossed for the Beta release.
I refuse to use Windows! It’s cause me much headache and money from failed performance. I switched to OS X and have been much happier with it’s performance. Now I wish more coders would get a freaking clue. I use Mac ENC on three of my computers. They never once crashed. Also I can pug in any printer and it just works. I can’t say that for Windows. I can’t tell you how many printers we had to buy to find one that worked.