Ward Cunningham Interviewed By Brian Ingerson

The interview was conducted over the phone on ...

I (BrianIngerson) have only been dabbling in the world of Wiki for less than a year. Rather than answer that question myself, I decided to ask the inventor of the Wiki. Now by pure coincidence, Ward Cunningham lives but a few miles from my house and well within my telephone area code. I decided to drop him a line, and find out his innermost feelings on his creation:

Brian: Yes, hello. May I speak to Mr Ward Cunningham?

Ward: Who is this?

Brian: This is Brian Ingerson from Perl.com. I have a few questions.

Ward: Perl?! That's not me! Wall is to blame. Call him.

Brian: No. Wait. It's about the Wiki.

Ward: Ah, yes. The Wiki. Well let's get to business.

Brian: Why did you invent the Wiki?

Ward: Wiki had a predecessor that was a hyper-card stack. I wrote it to explore hypertext. I wanted to try recording something that was ragged, something that wouldn't fit into columns. I had this pet theory that programming ideas were spread by people working together. I set out to chart the flow of ideas through my company (then Tektronix). This turned out to be more fun than I ever would have imagined.

When we were really trying to capture a programmer's experience in software patterns, I remembered that stack and set out to do it over with the technology of the moment, the World Wide Web. This was 1994. I wrote Wiki to support and enlarge the community writing software patterns.

Brian: What do you see as Wiki's most-positive contribution to the world?

Ward: Back in 1994, the Web was a pretty wonderful place, with lots of people putting up stuff just because they thought someone else would find it interesting or useful. Wiki preserves that feeling in a place that has become too much of a shopping mall. It reminds people that sometimes to work together you have to trust each other more than you have any reason to.

Brian: Are you concerned that there are so many different Wiki implementations?

Ward: I was concerned once. I wish everyone used my markup instead of inventing their own. But that didn't happen. Now I realize that the implementations have done more to spread the idea than I ever could with my one version. That is the way it is with really simple things.

Brian: What programming language is your Wiki written in?

Ward: Um, ... Perl.

Brian: Tell me about that.

click