Civil Rights
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
q2K BHP
Black History Portal
THE BHP WIRE —
HIDDEN TRUTHS
What's New!
Explore the people, places, events, achievements, struggles and stories that shaped our journey.
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
Innovation, patents, science, technology and world-changing contributions.
Pioneers, champions, Negro Leagues, records, activism and excellence.
Meet the people whose lives, choices and achievements shaped the journey.
Black towns, communities, institutions and places where history happened.
Moments that changed communities, movements, institutions and the nation.
Katherine Johnson’s mathematical calculations helped guide some of America’s most important early space missions while she confronted the racial and gender barriers faced by Black women in twentieth-century America.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
Ward Cunningham | |
|---|---|
 Cunningham in December 2011 | |
| Born | Howard G. Cunningham May 26, 1949 Michigan City, Indiana, U.S. |
| Education | Purdue University |
| Occupation | Computer programmer |
| Years active | 1984–present |
| Known for |
|
| Call sign | K9OX |
Howard G. Cunningham (born May 26, 1949) is an American computer programmer, who developed the first wiki[1][2] and co-authored the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. Called a pioneer,[3] and innovator,[1][2] he also helped create both software design patterns and extreme programming. He began coding the WikiWikiWeb in 1994, and installed it on c2.com (the website of his software consulting firm) on March 25, 1995, as an add-on to the Portland Pattern Repository. He co-authored (with Bo Leuf) a book about wikis, entitled The Wiki Way, and invented the Framework for Integrated Test.
Cunningham was a keynote speaker at the first three instances of the WikiSym conference series on wiki research and practice, and also at the Wikimedia Developer Summit 2017.[4] He was a keynote speaker at the MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference, Spring 2024.[5]
Cunningham was born in Michigan City, Indiana, on May 26, 1949.[6] He grew up in Highland, Indiana, where he completed high school.[7]
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, graduating in 1978.[8] He is a co-founder of Cunningham & Cunningham, a software consultancy he started with his wife.[9]
Cunningham 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 Programming conference which it sponsors.
Cunningham was part of the Smalltalk community.
From December 2003 until October 2005, Cunningham worked for Microsoft 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. In May 2009, he joined AboutUs as its chief technology officer.[3][10] On March 24, 2011 The Oregonian reported that Cunningham had departed AboutUs to join the Venice Beach-based CitizenGlobal, a startup working on crowd-sourced video content, as their chief technology officer and the Co-Creation Czar.[11] He remains "an adviser" with AboutUs.[12][13] In April 2013, Cunningham left CitizenGlobal to work as a programmer at New Relic.[14]
Cunningham is well known for a few widely disseminated ideas which he originated and developed. The most famous among these are the wiki and many ideas in the field of software design patterns, made popular by the Gang of Four (GoF). He owns the company Cunningham & Cunningham Inc., a consultancy that has specialized in object-oriented programming. He coined the concept of technical debt and expanded on the idea in 1992.[15][16] He created the site (and software) WikiWikiWeb, the first internet wiki, in 1995.
In 2001, he signed the Manifesto for Agile Software Development as a co-author.[17][better source needed]
When asked in a 2006 interview with internetnews.com whether he considered patenting the wiki concept, he explained that he thought the idea "just sounded like something that no one would want to pay money for."[18]
Cunningham is interested 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."[19]
In 2011, Cunningham created Smallest Federated Wiki, a tool for wiki federation, which applies aspects of software development such as forking to wiki pages.
Cunningham has contributed to the practice of object-oriented programming, in particular the use of pattern languages and (with Kent Beck) the class-responsibility-collaboration cards. He also contributes to the Extreme programming software development methodology. Much of this work was done collaboratively on the first wiki site.
Cunningham is credited with the idea: "The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer."[20][21] This refers to the observation that people are quicker to correct a wrong answer than to answer an unanswered question. According to Steven McGeady, Cunningham advised him of this on a whim in the early 1980s, and McGeady dubbed this Cunningham's Law.[22][21] Although originally referring to interactions on Usenet, the law has been used to describe how other online communities work, such as Wikipedia.[23][21] Cunningham relativises his ownership of the law, calling it a "misquote that disproves itself by propagating through the internet" and by saying that he "never suggested asking questions by posting wrong answers".[24]
Cunningham lives in Beaverton, Oregon.[14] He holds an amateur radio Extra class license. His call sign is K9OX.[25][26][27][28]
Cunningham is Nike's first "Code for a Better World" Fellow.[29]
n.b. named after Ward Cunningham, a colleague of mine at Tektronix. This was his advice to me in the early 1980s with reference to what was later dubbed USENET, but since generalized to the Web and the Internet as a whole. Ward is now famous as the inventor of the Wiki. Ironically, Wikipedia is now perhaps the most widely-known proof of Cunningham's Law.
Media from Commons
Quotations from Wikiquote
(WikiWikiWeb), includes his WikiHomePageSource: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
The WikiWikiWeb is the first wiki, or user-editable website. It was launched on 25 March 1995 by programmer Ward Cunningham and has been a read-only archive since 2015. The name WikiWikiWeb originally also applied to the wiki software that operated the website, which was later renamed to "WikiBase".
PhpWiki is a web-based wiki software application. It began as a clone of WikiWikiWeb and was the first wiki written in PHP. PhpWiki has been used to edit and format paper books for publication.
A wiki ( WIK-ee) is a form of hypertext publication on the internet which is collaboratively edited and managed by its audience directly through a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages that can either be edited by the public or any organization. The name derives from the first user-editable website called WikiWikiWeb – wiki being a Hawaiian word meaning 'quick' (pronounced [ˈviti]). Wikis are powered by wiki software, also known as wiki engines. Being a form of content management system, these differ from other web-based systems such as blog software or static site generators in that the content is created without any defined owner or leader. Wikis have little inherent structure, allowing one to emerge according to the needs of the users. Wiki engines usually allow content to be written using a lightweight markup language and sometimes edited with the help of a rich-text editor. There are dozens of different wiki engines in use, both standalone and part of other software, such as bug tracking systems. Some wiki engines are free and open-source, whereas others are proprietary. Some permit control over different functions (levels of access); for example, editing rights may permit changing, adding, or removing material. Others may permit access without enforcing access control. Further rules may be imposed to organize content. In addition to hosting user-authored content, wikis allow those users to interact, hold discussions, and collaborate. There are hundreds of thousands of wikis in use, both public and private, including wikis functioning as knowledge management resources, note-taking tools, community websites, and intranets. Ward Cunningham, the developer of the first wiki software, WikiWikiWeb, originally described wiki as "the simplest online database that could possibly work". The online encyclopedia project Wikipedia is the most popular wiki-based website, as well as being one of the internet's most popular websites, having been ranked consistently as such since at least 2007. Wikipedia is not a single wiki but rather a collection of hundreds of wikis, with each one pertaining to a specific language, making it the largest reference work of all time. The English-language Wikipedia has the largest collection of articles, standing at 7,253,881 as of October 2026.
Howard G. Cunningham (born May 26, 1949) is an American computer programmer, who developed the first wiki and co-authored the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. Called a pioneer, and innovator, he also helped create both software design patterns and extreme programming. He began coding the WikiWikiWeb in 1994, and installed it on c2.com (the website of his software consulting firm) on March 25, 1995, as an add-on to the Portland Pattern Repository. He co-authored (with Bo Leuf) a book about wikis, entitled The Wiki Way, and invented the Framework for Integrated Test. Cunningham was a keynote speaker at the first three instances of the WikiSym conference series on wiki research and practice, and also at the Wikimedia Developer Summit 2017. He was a keynote speaker at the MediaWiki Users and Developers Conference, Spring 2024.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →The Greenwood District.
