Howard G. Cunningham
is a programmer and is popularly known as the inventor of the first wiki, which is called
WikiWikiWeb. He is also known for his pioneering work in patterns and Extreme
Programming. He started programming WikiWikiWeb in 1994 and installed it on the Web site of his software consultancy Cunningham & Cunningham 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.
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, 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 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?"
Read more about Ward Cunningham.