Ward Cunningham

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Ward Cunningham

Howard G. "Ward" Cunningham (born May 26, 1949) is the American

United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
computer program

Computer program

Computer programs are Instruction for a computer. A computer requires programs to function. Moreover, a computer program does not run unless its instructions are executed by a Central processing unit; however, a program may communicate an Algorithm#Formalization of algorithms to people without running....
mer who developed the first wiki

Wiki

A wiki is a page or collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content , using a simplified markup language....
. A pioneer in both design pattern

Design pattern (computer science)

In software engineering, a design pattern is a general reusable solution to a commonly occurring problem in software design. A design pattern is not a finished design that can be transformed directly into code ....
s and Extreme Programming

Extreme Programming

Extreme Programming is a software engineering methodology prescribing a set of daily stakeholder Extreme Programming#Practices that embody and encourage particular Extreme Programming#XP values ....
, he started programming the software WikiWikiWeb

WikiWikiWeb

Website

A Web site is a collection of related Web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that are hosted on one Web server, usually accessible via the Internet....
of his software consultancy, Cunningham & Cunningham (commonly known by its domain name, c2.com), on March 25, 1995, as an add-on to the Portland Pattern Repository

Portland Pattern Repository

The Portland Pattern Repository is a repository for design pattern s. It was accompanied by a companion website, WikiWikiWeb, which was the world's first wiki....
. He currently lives in Beaverton, Oregon

Beaverton, Oregon

Beaverton is a city in Washington County, Oregon, Oregon, United States, seven miles west of Portland, Oregon in the Tualatin River Valley., its population is estimated to be 86,205, almost 14% more than the United States Census, 2000 figure of 76,129....
and is the chief technology officer for AboutUs.

He has co-authored a book about wikis, titled The Wiki Way

The Wiki Way

The Wiki Way: Quick Collaboration on the Web by Bo Leuf and Ward Cunningham is a book about the WikiWiki collaborative editing system, such as that used on Wikipedia....
, and also invented Framework for Integrated Tests.

Discussion

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Quotations

(Speaking about Eclipse Foundation) Global collaboration is something that Wiki mastered in a small way and here we can master it in a big way.

I don't claim to be a methodologist, but I act like one only because I do methodology to protect myself from crazy methodologists.

People who understand their collective goals and values are pretty good at self-organizing -- as long as they are allowed to.

When a manager asks for hard data, that's usually just his way of saying no.

Wiki helped define the category of social software.

Wikis work best in environments where you're comfortable delegating control to the users of the system.

Encyclopedia

Howard G. "Ward" Cunningham (born May 26, 1949) is the American

United States

Computer program

Wiki

A wiki is a page or collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content , using a simplified markup language....
. A pioneer in both design pattern

Design pattern (computer science)

Extreme Programming

WikiWikiWeb

Website

Portland Pattern Repository

Beaverton, Oregon

The Wiki Way

WikiSym

WikiSym is a short hand for International Symposium on Wikis, or the Wiki Symposium, a conference dedicated to wiki research and practice....
conference series on wiki research and practice.

Personal history

Howard G. "Ward" Cunningham received his Bachelor's degree

Bachelor's degree

A bachelor's degree is usually an undergraduate academic degree awarded for a course or major that generally lasts for three, four, or in some cases and countries, five or six years....
in interdisciplinary engineering (electrical engineering

Electrical engineering

Electrical engineering, sometimes referred to as electrical and electronic engineering, is a field of engineering that deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism....
and computer science

Computer science

Computer science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation, and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems....
) and his master's degree

Master's degree

A master's degree provides a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of profession. Within the area studied, graduates possess advanced knowledge of a specialized body of theory and applied topics; high order skills in analysis, Critical thinking and/or professional application; and the ability to problem solving a...
in computer science from Purdue University

Purdue University

Purdue University, located in West Lafayette, Indiana, Indiana, United States, is the flagship university of the six campuses within the Purdue University System....
. 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

Tektronix

Tektronix, Inc. is a United States company best known for its test and measurement equipment such as oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and video and mobile test protocol equipment....
Computer Research Laboratory. He is founder of the Hillside Group and has served as program chair of the Pattern Languages of Programming

Pattern Languages of Programming

Pattern Languages of Programs is the name of a group of annual conferences. The purpose of these conferences is to develop and refine the art of software patterns, cf....
conference which it sponsors. Cunningham was part of the Smalltalk

Smalltalk

Smalltalk is an Object-oriented programming, Type system, reflection computer programming programming language. Smalltalk was created as the language to underpin the "new world" of computing exemplified by "human?computer symbiosis." It was designed and created in part for educational use, more so for constructionist learning, at PARC by Al...
community. From December 2003 until October 2005, he worked for Microsoft Corporation 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

Eclipse Foundation

The Eclipse Foundation is a not-for-profit, member supported corporation that hosts the open-source Eclipse and helps cultivate both an open source community and an ecosystem of complementary products and services....
. In May 2007, he joined AboutUs as its chief technology officer.

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 (named after WikiWikiWeb

WikiWikiWeb

WikiWikiWeb was the first wiki application ever written. It was developed in 1994 by Ward Cunningham in order to make the exchange of ideas between programmers easier and was based on the ideas developed in HyperCard stacks that he built in the late 1980s....
) and many ideas in the field of software patterns.

In a 2006 interview with internetnews.com Cunningham admitted that he had thought about patenting the Wiki concept when he first created it.

He has a current interest 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.”

Patterns and Extreme Programming

Cunningham is also well known for his contributions to the developing practice of object-oriented programming

Object-oriented programming

Object-oriented programming is a programming paradigm that uses "Object_" and their interactions to design applications and computer programs....
, in particular the use of pattern language

Pattern language

A pattern language is a structured method of describing good design practices within a field of expertise. It is characterized by # Noticing and naming the common problems in a field of interest,...
s and (with Kent Beck

Kent Beck

Kent Beck is an American software engineer and the creator of Extreme Programming, developed while he was serving as project leader on Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation , a long-term project for employee payroll that was canceled just under 4 years after it was started....
) CRC (Class-Responsibility Collaboration) card

Class-Responsibility-Collaboration card

Class Responsibility Collaborator are a brainstorming tool used in the design of object-oriented software. They were proposed by Ward Cunningham and Kent Beck....
s. He is also a significant contributor to the Extreme Programming

Extreme Programming

Software development

Software development is the set of activities that results in software products. Software development may include research, new development, modification, reuse, re-engineering, maintenance, or any other activities that result in software products....
methodology. A great deal of this work was collaboratively carried out in the first wiki site itself.

External links

, including his ""
(paper introducing CRC Cards)
(2004 interview)
"" - profile originally in The Oregonian
The Oregonian

The Oregonian is the major daily newspaper in Portland, Oregon, owned by Advance Publications. It is the oldest continuously published newspaper on the West Coast of the United States, founded as a weekly by Thomas J....
, December 19, 2005