According to David Cohn, at yesterday’s blogger event in San Fransisco prior to the 2011 launch, Autodesk provided the following figures:

• 76,000 man hours spent on Q/A of the new release
• 6,000 total code reviews of new release
• 2,000 commands tested
• 4,600 Beta customers involved in AutoCAD 2011
• 1.4M lines of old code were removed

Well, that’s all very nice, but those numbers are completely meaningless without context. Autodesk may as well have just published the equivalent numbers for Release 13; I’m sure they would have looked impressive in isolation.

Did anybody in the blogger audience ask the obvious question?

How do these numbers compare with previous releases?

If so, I’d be interested to see the answer.

If not, why not? I’d like to think that I would have asked such a question rather than sitting there unquestionably accepting whatever was being presented.

I’d like to think that, but I can’t. I’m in no position to throw stones. I had a similar opportunity at the equivalent event last year and failed to take advantage of it. I was operating at a very sub-optimal level for a variety of reasons (some of which were entirely of my own making, so no excuses there). It was a small, fairly informal event at which Autodesk actively and repeatedly encouraged two-way communication. But sitting there absorbing what I was told was pretty much all I did. I even caught myself on video doing this (i.e. very little), so I have absolutely no right to expect anything better from anyone else this year.

Still, it would have been nice to have had that question asked. It would be even nicer to have it answered. Otherwise, the numbers will remain meaningless.