Ward Cunningham

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Ward Cunningham at Wikimania 2006

Howard G. "Ward" Cunningham (born May 26, 1949) is the American computer programmer who invented the wiki^{[citation needed]}. A pioneer in both design patterns and Extreme Programming, he started programming the software WikiWikiWeb in 1994 and installed it on the website 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. He currently lives in Beaverton, Oregon.

1 Personal history
2 Ideas and inventions
- 2.1 Patterns and Extreme Programming
3 References
4 External links

Personal history

Howard G. "Ward" 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. Afterwards from October 2005 to May 2007, he held the position of Director of Committer Community Development at the Eclipse Foundation. From May 2007 forward, he will be working for AboutUs as their chief technology officer.^[1]^[2]

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 and practices that later became known as "Extreme Programming" or "XP."

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

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.