Ward Stories

A place to share stories by and about Ward Cunningham.

When I joined Tektronix I attended an engineering orientation where the founder of the company, Howard Vollum, spoke. After a few light comments about his long-time rival, Hewlett-Packard, he focused on our real enemy, CreepingFeaturitis. I was struck by his intensity. It took me a few years to integrate his comments with the company motto: committed to technical excellence . He was right, of course. You'll never find the exquisite solution to a real problem if you are busy tending little problems of your own making. -- WardCunningham

I worked with a fellow once who refused to comment, indent or even carriage return at reasonable places. I made him sit and watch me refactor one particularly crucial piece of code until we had something even KentBeck would like. I found lots of duplication and irregularities, but nothing fatally wrong with the original, much to my amazement.

"What do you think?" I asked.

"I think we just wasted an hour," he said, "It still does the same thing."

"You're right" I said as I reverted to his original. If he wasn't going to admit it looked better, I wasn't going to let him enjoy looking at it.

I ran into him at a conference a few months later. He said he had tried formatting code on his own and kinda liked it. Ahh. Small successes. There is a moral: If you don't like looking at your code you are probably not writing it well. -- WardCunningham

Ward, I want to be as wise and as patient as you are, and I want it now! -- RonJeffries

See also: WardsWisdom, WardCunninghamWritingsVideosEtc?