Ward Cunningham
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Howard G. Cunningham (born May 26, 1949) is an American computer programmer who developed the first
wiki A wiki ( ) is a form of hypertext publication on the internet which is collaboratively edited and managed by its audience directly through a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages that can either be edited by the public or l ...
Excerpt from 2014 book '' The Innovators''. and was a co-author of the '' Manifesto for Agile Software Development''. Called a pioneer, and innovator, he also helped create both
software design pattern In software engineering, a software design pattern or design pattern is a general, reusable solution to a commonly occurring problem in many contexts in software design. A design pattern is not a rigid structure to be transplanted directly into s ...
s and
extreme programming Extreme programming (XP) is a software development methodology intended to improve software quality and responsiveness to changing customer requirements. As a type of agile software development,"Human Centred Technology Workshop 2006 ", 2006, ...
. He began coding the
WikiWikiWeb The WikiWikiWeb is the first wiki, or user-editable website. It was launched on 25 March 1995 by programmer Ward Cunningham and has been a read-only archive since 2015. The name ''WikiWikiWeb'' originally also applied to the wiki software that o ...
in 1994, and installed it on c2.com (the website of his software
consulting firm A consulting firm or simply consultancy is a professional service firm that provides expertise and specialised labour for a fee, through the use of consultants. Consulting firms may have one employee or thousands; they may consult in a broad ra ...
) on March 25, 1995, as an add-on to the Portland Pattern Repository. He co-authored (with Bo Leuf) a book about wikis, entitled '' The Wiki Way'', and invented the Framework for Integrated Test. Cunningham was a keynote speaker at the first three instances of the WikiSym conference series on wiki research and practice, and also at the Wikimedia Developer Summit 2017. He was a keynote speaker at the MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference, Spring 2024.


Early life and career

Cunningham was born in
Michigan City, Indiana Michigan City is a city in LaPorte County, Indiana, United States. It had a population of 32,075 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Located along Lake Michigan in the Michiana region, the city is about east of Chicago and is west o ...
, on May 26, 1949. He grew up in Highland, Indiana, where he completed high school. 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 Purdue University is a Public university#United States, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, United States, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded ...
, graduating in 1978. He is a co-founder of Cunningham & Cunningham, a software consultancy he started with his wife. Cunningham has also served as Director of R&D at Wyatt Software and as Principal Engineer in the
Tektronix Tektronix, Inc., historically widely known as Tek, is an American company best known for manufacturing test and measurement devices such as oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and video and mobile test protocol equipment. Originally an independent c ...
Computer Research Laboratory. He is founder of
The Hillside Group The Hillside Group is an educational nonprofit organization founded in August 1993 to help Programmer, software developers analyze and document common development and design problems as software design patterns. The Hillside Group supports the pat ...
and has served as program chair of the Pattern Languages of Programming conference which it sponsors. Cunningham was part of the
Smalltalk Smalltalk is a purely object oriented programming language (OOP) that was originally created in the 1970s for educational use, specifically for constructionist learning, but later found use in business. It was created at Xerox PARC by Learni ...
community. From December 2003 until October 2005, Cunningham worked for
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
in the "Patterns & Practices" group. From October 2005 to May 2007, he held the position of Director of Committer Community Development at the Eclipse Foundation. In May 2009, he joined AboutUs as its chief technology officer. On March 24, 2011 ''
The Oregonian ''The Oregonian'' is a daily newspaper based in Portland, Oregon, United States, owned by Advance Publications. It is the oldest continuously published newspaper on the West Coast of the United States, U.S. West Coast, founded as a weekly by Tho ...
'' reported that Cunningham had departed AboutUs to join the Venice Beach-based CitizenGlobal, a startup working on crowd-sourced video content, as their chief technology officer and the Co-Creation Czar. He remains "an adviser" with AboutUs. In April 2013, Cunningham left CitizenGlobal to work as a programmer at New Relic.


Ideas and inventions

Cunningham is well known for a few widely disseminated ideas which he originated and developed. The most famous among these are the wiki and many ideas in the field of software design patterns, made popular by the Gang of Four (GoF). He owns the company Cunningham & Cunningham Inc., a consultancy that has specialized in
object-oriented programming Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of '' objects''. Objects can contain data (called fields, attributes or properties) and have actions they can perform (called procedures or methods and impl ...
. He coined the concept of technical debt and expanded on the idea in 1992. He created the site (and software)
WikiWikiWeb The WikiWikiWeb is the first wiki, or user-editable website. It was launched on 25 March 1995 by programmer Ward Cunningham and has been a read-only archive since 2015. The name ''WikiWikiWeb'' originally also applied to the wiki software that o ...
, the first internet wiki, in 1995. In 2001, he signed the Manifesto for Agile Software Development as a co-author. When asked in a 2006 interview with internetnews.com whether he considered patenting the wiki concept, he explained that he thought the idea "just sounded like something that no one would want to pay money for." Cunningham is interested in tracking the number and location of wiki page edits as a sociological experiment and may even consider the degradation of a wiki page as part of its process to stability. "There are those who give and those who take. You can tell by reading what they write." In 2011, Cunningham created Smallest Federated Wiki, a tool for wiki federation, which applies aspects of software development such as forking to wiki pages. Cunningham has contributed to the practice of
object-oriented programming Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of '' objects''. Objects can contain data (called fields, attributes or properties) and have actions they can perform (called procedures or methods and impl ...
, in particular the use of pattern languages and (with Kent Beck) the
class-responsibility-collaboration card Class-responsibility-collaboration (CRC) cards are a brainstorming tool used in the design of object-oriented software. They were originally proposed by Ward Cunningham and Kent Beck as a teaching tool but are also popular among expert designers ...
s. He also contributes to the extreme programming
software development methodology In software engineering, a software development process or software development life cycle (SDLC) is a process of planning and managing software development. It typically involves dividing software development work into smaller, parallel, or s ...
. Much of this work was done collaboratively on the first wiki site.


"Cunningham's Law"

Cunningham is credited with the idea: "The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer." This refers to the observation that people are quicker to correct a wrong answer than to answer an unanswered question. According to Steven McGeady, Cunningham advised him of this on a whim in the early 1980s, and McGeady dubbed this Cunningham's Law. Although originally referring to interactions on
Usenet Usenet (), a portmanteau of User's Network, is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP, Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Elli ...
, the law has been used to describe how other online communities work, such as Wikipedia. Cunningham relativises his ownership of the law, calling it a "misquote that disproves itself by propagating through the internet" and by saying that he "never suggested asking questions by posting wrong answers".


Personal life

Cunningham lives in Beaverton, Oregon. He holds an
amateur radio Amateur radio, also known as ham radio, is the use of the radio frequency radio spectrum, spectrum for purposes of non-commercial exchange of messages, wireless experimentation, self-training, private recreation, radiosport, contesting, and emer ...
extra class license issued by the
Federal Communications Commission The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent agency of the United States government that regulates communications by radio, television, wire, internet, wi-fi, satellite, and cable across the United States. The FCC maintains j ...
. His
call sign In broadcasting and radio communications, a call sign (also known as a call name or call letters—and historically as a call signal—or abbreviated as a call) is a unique identifier for a transmitter station. A call sign can be formally as ...
is K9OX. Cunningham is Nike's first "Code for a Better World" Fellow.


Publications

*


See also

* Christopher Alexander – Cunningham cites Alexander's work as directly influencing his own. * PatternShare


References


External links

* , WikiWikiWeb, includes his WikiHomePage
2012 Dr. Dobb's Interview


* ttp://www.microsoft.com/practices The Microsoft patterns & practices group home pagebr>archived


(2004 interview) *
The Web's wizard of working together
" – profile originally in ''
The Oregonian ''The Oregonian'' is a daily newspaper based in Portland, Oregon, United States, owned by Advance Publications. It is the oldest continuously published newspaper on the West Coast of the United States, U.S. West Coast, founded as a weekly by Tho ...
'', December 19, 2005 {{DEFAULTSORT:Cunningham, Ward 1949 births Living people 21st-century American non-fiction writers Amateur radio people American computer programmers American technology writers Extreme programming People from Beaverton, Oregon Writers from Portland, Oregon Purdue University College of Engineering alumni Technology evangelists Tektronix people Wikimedia Foundation Advisory Board members People from Highland, Lake County, Indiana Microsoft employees Articles containing video clips Agile software development Software design patterns