Ward Cunningham

Howard G. "Ward" Cunningham (born May 26, 1949) is an American computer programmer, and is best known as the inventor of the first wiki, which is called WikiWikiWeb, and one of the pioneers in patterns and Extreme Programming. He started programming WikiWikiWeb in 1994 and installed it on the Web site of his software consultancy Cunningham & Cunningham on March 25, 1995, as an add-on to the Portland Pattern Repository. Cunningham, known in some software circles simply as Ward, currently lives in Beaverton, Oregon, southwest of Portland.

Personal history

Cunningham received his bachelor's degree in interdisciplinary engineering (electrical engineering and computer science) and his master's degree in computer science from Purdue University. He is a founder of Cunningham & Cunningham, Inc. He has also served as Director of R&D at Wyatt Software and as Principal Engineer in the Tektronix Computer Research Laboratory. He is founder of the Hillside Group and has served as program chair of the Pattern Languages of Programs conference which it sponsors. Ward was part of the Smalltalk community. From December 2003 until October 2005 he worked for Microsoft Corporation in the "patterns & practices" group. As of October 2005, he is the Director of Committer Community Development at the Eclipse Foundation.

Ideas and inventions

Cunningham is well-known for a few widely disseminated ideas which he originated and developed. Among these, the most famous are the wiki (named after WikiWikiWeb), and many patterns in the field of software patterns, including the collection of patterns that later became known as "Extreme Programming" or "XP."

Patterns and Extreme Programming

Cunningham is also well known for his contributions to the developing practice of object-oriented programming: in particular, the use of pattern languages, and CRC (Class-Responsibility-Collaboration) cards (with Kent Beck). He is also a significant contributor to Extreme Programming, a software development methodology. A great deal of this work was carried out in the first wiki site itself. His most famous quote is probably, "What's the simplest thing that could possibly work?" Or, it could be, "What's the simplest thing that would definitely work?". The underlying theme in both of these is SIMPLE.

External links

The Way of Eclipse interview at Eclipsecon 2006
WikiWikiWeb
Fit: Framework for Integrated Test
EclipseCon 2006 interview with Ward Cunningham (MP3 audio podcast, running time 20:01)
Cunningham's "WikiHomePage" on WikiWikiWeb
The Microsoft patterns & practices group home page
A Laboratory For Teaching Object-Oriented Thinking (paper introducing CRC Cards)
The Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work (2004 interview)
"The Web's wizard of working together" - profile in The Oregonian, December 19, 2005

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Personal history

Ideas and inventions

Patterns and Extreme Programming

External links