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Ward Cunningham

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Computing People

   Ward Cunningham at Wikimania 2006.
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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. 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.

   Cunningham currently lives in Beaverton, Oregon.

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.
   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 and practices 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.

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Cunningham"
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