Ideas and Inventions
Cunningham is well known for a few widely disseminated ideas which he originated and developed. The most famous among these are the wiki (the Hawaiian word for "quick") and many ideas in the field of software design patterns. He owns the company Cunningham & Cunningham Inc., a small consultancy that has specialized in object-oriented programming.
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."
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."
According to Steven McGeady, Cunningham advised him in the early 1980s, "The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question, it’s to post the wrong answer." McGeady dubbed this Cunningham's Law. Although Cunningham was referring to interactions on Usenet, the law has been used to describe how Wikipedia works.
Read more about this topic: Ward Cunningham
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