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Ward Cunningham Quotes

born 1949 United States

Howard G. "Ward" Cunningham (born 26 May 1949) is an American computer programmer, most famous as the inventor of the first wiki, which was first called WikiWikiWeb (now called WardsWiki), and one of the pioneers of software design patterns and Extreme Programming.

United States
Non-fiction authors
Programmers
Technology writers

Also known as: Cunningham, Ward

Random Ward Cunningham quote

50 quotes

Putting a new feature into a program is important, but refactoring so new features can be added in the future is equally important.

Crucible of Creativity (2005)

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

Geek Noise (2004)

In creating wiki, I wanted to stroke that story-telling nature in all of us.

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003)

Why have a locked wiki when you can instead just post static Web pages?

Simplicity is the shortest path to a solution.

The complexity that we despise is the complexity that leads to difficulty.

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003)

What is simplicity? Simplicity is the shortest path to a solution.

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003)

My hope is that wiki becomes a totem for a way of interacting with people.

Crucible of Creativity (2005)

A wiki is always in the process of being organized … So the status quo for a wiki is always partially organized.

I think we can become excellent predictors. It's just that we're careful not to depend upon prediction anymore than we have to.

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003)

The blogosphere is a community that might produce a work. Whereas a wiki is a work that might produce a community. It’s all just people communicating.

Crucible of Creativity (2005)

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

Geek Noise (2004)

A wiki works best where you're trying to answer a question that you can't easily pose, where there's not a natural structure that's known in advance to what you need to know.

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003)

I say, forget all that and ask yourself, "What's the simplest thing that could possibly work?"

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003)

What you get as a wiki reader is access to people who had no voice before.

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003)

People can and do trust works produced by people they don’t know. The real world is still trying to figure out how Wikipedia works.

Crucible of Creativity (2005)

A wiki is a place to write in the same way that a party is a place to talk.

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

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003)

Sometimes when you collaborate, you have to trust people more than you have any reason to do so. It works because most people are good

A wiki is a work sustained by a community.

Crucible of Creativity (2005)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Ward Cunningham (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.