[pmwiki-users] ZAP? (Was: Behavior of Profiles/Profiles)

The Editor editor at fast.st
Wed Oct 17 11:02:33 CDT 2007


On 10/17/07, Pico Ben-Amotz <pmwiki at ben-amotz.com> wrote:

> When thinking about ZAP there has always been a disconnect between its
> potential and its execution.  Early on you recognized and embraced the
> potential of ZAP.  Others of us treated ZAP like a suspicious
> attachment from an unknown source.  The concern, at least for me, has
> always been that ZAP was created, and recreated, so quickly and so
> often, based on an inspired and prolific vision that was not grounded
> in experience, consistency and perspective.  In the end, when ZAP's
> interesting author exited just as abruptly as he had entered, the
> recipe fell into a state of limbo.  Just visit the page you cite
> (Cookbook/MemberMgmt ) and click on any of the links to the snippets
> that you refer to and you will see that they point to non-existent
> pages on a "zapbeta" install on the fast.st site, e.g.

Just a note that I updated the recipe page to replace the links with
the actual code snippets. Thank you Pico for pointing this out. The
snippets are now currently being maintained by Benoit, at a different
URL, and the whole bundle of this is available as a complete download
from the ZAP recipe page. Somehow the links just never got updated.

> The purpose of this post isn't to knock ZAP's author or his
> contributions, but to challenge you to look beneath the potential of
> ZAP and address the issue of its design, execution, support and
> future.  Your plans to release a bundle of PmWiki+ZAP to demonstrate
> its use as a CMS sounds interesting, but that doesn't address
> underlying concerns about ZAP itself.  Do you have any plans to take a
> step back and take a fresh look at ZAP?  Should it be scaled back into
> some smaller recipes with vetted code and architecture?

I too would be very interested in seeing these "underlying concerns"
brought to light. Admittedly ZAP went through rapid development, and
as one person on the list put it, the author (myself) experienced a
"very public learning curve". However, to the best of my knowledge and
ability I addressed every specific issue raised in an effort to make
ZAP the best software possible.

My biggest frustration with this list was the constant barrage of
insinuations and accusations, against ZAP. They may have been
well-founded--but invariably they were so vague and unsubstantiated
(like this post), and often malicious enough (unlike this post) that
there was no way for me to tell if the charges were real, or just the
figment of some disgruntled person's imagination!  Its certainly
difficult to fix a problem no one can point out...

My hope was always that other more experienced programmers would help
in the process of software review--but that never occurred. This is
not to say Pm and many others were not extremely helpful in answering
questions. But there was no systematic review process or any
pinpointing of specific problems. Pm did exploit one very specific
vulnerability (which I appreciated), and it was plugged, responsibly,
within hours. Unfortunately though, his example was the exception not
the rule among ZAP critics.

> I realize and respect how much you contribute to PmWiki and feel
> uncomfortable suggesting that you should do more.  But this is really
> more about your vision and support for ZAP.  You need to recognize the
> underlying disconnect and decide whether this is important enough to
> you to do something about.  Of course, it doesn't have to be you, but
> you are the only one these days who seems to be making writing recipes
> intended to work with ZAP.

The disconnect between "potential and its execution" was never so
great as you make it sound. To my knowledge, there is not a single
claim I made for ZAP that was not already demonstrably working and
functional. Can you point to one? And as a related observation, I note
there has not been even a single bug report, to my knowledge, in at
least four months. The fact is, ZAP actually works.

It is true, however, I did not fully appreciate the learning curve
required by experienced programmers to grasp a new and different way
of thinking. But that's hardly a disconnect between potential and
execution. As Pm astutely observed, ZAP is actually a kind of
scripting language. Relatively simple, but you still have to learn
it's basic rules, to tap into it's power.

Neither did development suddenly stop, it just moved: to ZAPwiki,
where its dramatic improvement over the last few months has shocked
even me--far exceeding MY wildest (already over active) imagination.
If there's a disconnect between potential and execution, the problem
is not with ZAP. ZAPwiki certainly proves that. The disconnect,
rather, seems to be with programmers who are too conventional (or
prejudiced) to appreciate ZAP's vision well enough to take the time to
learn how it works.

Cheers,
Dan

PS. I was serious about wanting to hear specific problems with ZAP, if
there are any. I'd even be willing to possibly help fix them (for old
time's sake). But please, specifics...



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