Ward Cunningham: Working

Ward Cunningham is American computer programmer who developed the first wiki. Explore interesting quotes on working.
Ward Cunningham: 138   quotes 0   likes

“The world is complex. That complexity is beautiful. I love trying to understand how things work. But that's because there's something to be learned from mastering that complexity.”

Ward Cunningham

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), The Simplest Thing that Could Possibly Work
Context: The complexity that we despise is the complexity that leads to difficulty. It isn't the complexity that raises problems. There is a lot of complexity in the world. The world is complex. That complexity is beautiful. I love trying to understand how things work. But that's because there's something to be learned from mastering that complexity.

Love , World , Beauty , Understanding

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

Ward Cunningham

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), The Simplest Thing that Could Possibly Work
Context: You are always taught to do as much as you can. Always put checks in. Always look for exceptions. Always handle the most general case. Always give the user the best advice. Always print a meaningful error message. Always this. Always that. You have so many things in the background that you're supposed to do, there's no room left to think. I say, forget all that and ask yourself, "What's the simplest thing that could possibly work?"
I think the advice got turned into a command: "Do the simplest thing that could possibly work." That's a little more confusing, because there isn't this notion that as soon as you've done it, we'll evaluate it.

Forgetting

“To worry about tomorrow is to detract from your work today. Time you spend thinking about tomorrow is time you're not spending thinking about what to do today.”

Ward Cunningham

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), To Plan or Not To Plan
Context: To worry about tomorrow is to detract from your work today. Time you spend thinking about tomorrow is time you're not spending thinking about what to do today. The place you leave in the code because you think you'll need it tomorrow, is actually a waste of time today — and a liability tomorrow. It does more harm than good.

Thinking , Time

“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.”

Ward Cunningham

Crucible of Creativity (2005)
Context: 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. A fantastic resource. Open source is produced by people that you can’t track down, but you can trust it in very deep ways. People can trust works by people they don’t know in this low communication cost environment.

People , World

“Top down hierarchies make communication work when it is expensive, I hope that wiki can be a flagship in this move in the industry to produce computer support for this kind of work and evolve organizational forms.”

Ward Cunningham

Crucible of Creativity (2005)

Hope , Communication , Support

“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.”

Ward Cunningham

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Exploring with Wiki

Question , Nature

“Computers are famous for difficulties. A difficulty is just a blockage from progress. You have to try a lot of things. When you finally find what works, it doesn't tell you a thing. It won't be the same tomorrow. Getting the computer to work is so often dealing with difficulties.”

Ward Cunningham

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), The Simplest Thing that Could Possibly Work

“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.”

Ward Cunningham

Crucible of Creativity (2005)

People , Communication

“Accept that you've got a common goal that we're all working towards and that we're working towards the same goal. In other words, align and self-organize.”

Ward Cunningham

Podcast Interview with Ward Cunningham (2006)

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

Ward Cunningham

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Exploring with Wiki

“I like the notion of working the program, like an artist works a lump of clay. An artist wants to make a sculpture, but before she makes the sculpture, she just massages the clay. She starts towards making the sculpture, and sees what the clay wants to do. And the more she handles the clay, the more the clay tends to do what she wants. It becomes compliant to her will.
A development team works on a piece of code over several months. Initially, they make a piece of code, and it's a little stiff. It's small, but it's still stiff. Then they move the code, and it gets a little easier to move.”

Ward Cunningham

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Working the Program

“Let's not worry about what somebody reading the code tomorrow is going to think. Let's not worry about whether it's efficient. Let's not even worry about whether it will work. Let's just write the simplest thing that could possibly work.”

Ward Cunningham

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), The Simplest Thing that Could Possibly Work

Thinking , Reading

“Over and over, people try to design systems that make tomorrow's work easy. But when tomorrow comes it turns out they didn't quite understand tomorrow's work, and they actually made it harder.”

Ward Cunningham

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Working the Program

People , Understanding

“When people work code they can often see things I set out to do that they wouldn't notice otherwise. And there are no obligations to say, "Ward you're brilliant," but sometimes they say, "Ward you're brilliant." And that strokes my ego. Pride of ownership? You bet.”

Ward Cunningham

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Collective Ownership of Code and Text

People

“A wiki is a work sustained by a community.”

Ward Cunningham

Crucible of Creativity (2005)

Communication

“Often, the program ends up amazing. You'll say, "This is beautifully architected." Well, where did that architecture come from?
In this case, architecture means the systematic way we deal with diverse requirements. Architecture allows us, when we go to do work we need to do on the program, to find where things go. It is a system that was worked into the program by all the little decisions we made — little decisions that were right, and little decisions that were wrong and corrected. In a sense we get the architecture without really trying. All the decisions in the context of the other decisions simply gel into an architecture.”

Ward Cunningham

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Working the Program

Way , Decision , Sense

“One’s words are a gift to the community. For the wiki nature to take whole, you have to let go of your words. You have to be okay with that. This goes into the name, called refactoring. To collaborate on a work, one must trust. The reason the cooperation happens is we are people and it is deep in our nature to do things together.”

Ward Cunningham

Crucible of Creativity (2005)

People , Communication , Nature