Information on Portal 2 Puzzle Creator
No; the Portal 2 authoring tools still have bugs in them. Valve was more like: "Hey, you can use the same crappy tools we used to create portal 2". The beta label is more a "we still have bugs"-label.
That's completely different from the sdk2 beta; where it's intended to have fixed all known bugs before shipping it. 
Ooooo, someone's getting impatient, and talking craaazy.
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Valve is known for their extremely thorough testing.
That's why most of their games are realized at their full potential instead of "let's please our fanbase and release it early, then realize it has millions of bugs".
The puzzle creator is currently in Beta. This means that it is more or less working but that there's room for improvements. That is where beta-players come in: play and find those bugs; report them and make suggestions on other improvements. Good game developers (like valve) take this very seriously and try to create the best experience for their players.
So basically: the longer a game is in beta; the more time there is for improvements and the better the final product will be! 
I guess you're right, but Valve should say more realistic things, they said the level editor was coming in early 2012, but they should have said "it's coming in 2012", do you notice the difference?
The way I see it, yes, the longer it is in beta the better and i realise that these things take time, but by now surely they should have a better idea of how long it takes to develop things, rather than releasing the majority of things late. Why dont they give themselves more realistic timeframes? Id rather be told it will take 6 months then be told it will be 2, oh wait no, another month, no, another 3 months.
I think in terms of boolean variables. Generally, it makes things easier.
Unless things have changed (which they very well may have) there is only 1 person whose entire job is to work on SDK tools. Tools which are also really low priority for them in relation to making new games or putting out new content for existing games. These tools are also derived from their own internal usage - tools that were designed only to get the job done and which doesn't need to work on a limitless array of systems, only the couple hundred (probably standardized hardware and OS) that they have in-house. What crashes for you probably works fine for them. The SDK software was never meant to be a fully polished editing suite.
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Well said.
(Don't listen to him, we'll be fine)
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I wonder what happens when Cave Johnson gets his pain pills...
If games are better the longer they're in beta, then HL2 ep:3 would be the best game ever. Sometimes people just take time and ration priorities... or get lazy and stop working on it.
Since when is ep3 in beta?
Beta isn't the time it takes to create a game 
Beta is the time a game is almost finished but needs final/external playtesting. Because it's external playtesting the feedback can be totally different from what the team is expecting. Certain function can be missed or seem strange. There are known cases of where a beta completely changed the final game. Because the players didn't like it (enough).
Also in beta testing there are a lot of people who all have different strategies to use a product. This often leads to beta testers finding a lot more bugs. Then the bugs are fixed until no more bugs or at least no more major bugs. And then the product is released. If the bugfinding/fixing process takes a long time that means a lot of bugs have been squashed and the final product is better. In the case of the Portal 2 beta there have been over 160 bugfixes in the last couple of weeks that includes a couple "fixed various (...)". So it's already a lot better then it was before.
Since when is ep3 in beta?
Beta isn't the time it takes to create a game
Beta is the time a game is almost finished but needs final/external playtesting. Because it's external playtesting the feedback can be totally different from what the team is expecting. Certain function can be missed or seem strange. There are known cases of where a beta completely changed the final game. Because the players didn't like it (enough).
Also in beta testing there are a lot of people who all have different strategies to use a product. This often leads to beta testers finding a lot more bugs. Then the bugs are fixed until no more bugs or at least no more major bugs. And then the product is released. If the bugfinding/fixing process takes a long time that means a lot of bugs have been squashed and the final product is better. In the case of the Portal 2 beta there have been over 160 bugfixes in the last couple of weeks that includes a couple "fixed various (...)". So it's already a lot better then it was before.
I guess HL2 ep:3 could be in development, or at most alpha, but still, just because a game takes longer in beta, doesn't necessarily mean it will be better. I've seen games that seem like they were never put through beta, and some that seem like they spent too long in beta and they (in the long run) don't effect the game too much (but take some frustrating moments). And any stage of development could affect the amount of bugs. A game designer could keep a game in development till all major bugs are fixed, which will take longer, or have play testers during development (make level, play level, fix level, repeat) it just depends on the variety of testers and determination of the programmers.
I don't want to say that the time a game was in beta is a measurement for the final quality. What i am saying is that the current portal 2 beta already found a couple of serious bugs that might have not been fixed otherwise. I've seen stability improve a lot since the beta was first sent out to people and they're still working on some serious issues. So I'm certain the wait will be worth it.
Ps: message sent from phone, it might have a bit more errors then normal.