"There is a programming smell here… which is kind of like the smell in your refrigerator, you know. Theres a sign that theres something wrong, but you cant quite put your finger on it. But you know if you leave it there, its only going to get worse."
Howard G. Cunningham 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 on March 25, 1995, as an add-on to the Portland Pattern Repository. He co-
"You dont want to write a big comment that tells others how to make a change they might want to make, because you dont know what change theyre going to want to make. Better to have the attitude that you cant help future programmers make their changes. All you can do is make it easy for them to understand what you were trying to do. And it will be easiest for them to understand what you were trying to do if you were very careful to not try to do too much."
"Often as you move comments around and have similar comments adjacent to each other, you find that half of the words can be cut out. Because a sentence says it all if the sentence is in just the right place. On Wards wiki, the process has been called "refactoring," which is what we call the process in software. Wards wiki is about software and it has software people on it, so they call it refactoring. Anyplace else it would probably be called editing. So on Wards wiki, refactoring is an ongoing process. The assumption is that when something turns out to not be ideal, it will be refactored again. Everything is subject to refactoring."
"The decisions I made designing wiki were very much inspired by my desire to create a model for the collaborative process I thought should happen in large code bases. I wanted wiki to mimic that."
"When people work code they can often see things I set out to do that they wouldnt notice otherwise. And there are no obligations to say, "Ward youre brilliant," but sometimes they say, "Ward youre brilliant." And that strokes my ego. Pride of ownership? You bet."
"It was a turning point in my programming career when I realized that I didnt have to win every argument. Id be talking about code with someone, and Id say, "I think the best way to do it is A." And theyd say, "I think the best way to do it is B. Id say, "Well no, its really A." And theyd say, "Well, we want to do B." It was a turning point for me when I could say, "Fine. Do B. Its not going to hurt us that much if Im wrong. Its not going to hurt us that much if Im right and you do B, because, we can correct mistakes. So lets find out if its a mistake."
"Discussion groups tend to keep covering the same ground over and over again, because people forget what was said before. I think the invention of the Frequently Asked Questions, the FAQ, was a response to that. A lot of times just reading the FAQ is more valuable than joining the discussion group."