Ward Cunningham

Ward Cunningham
Cunningham in December 2011.
Born	Howard G. Cunningham (1949-05-26) May 26, 1949 (age 67) Michigan City, Indiana, U.S.
Residence	Portland, Oregon, U.S.
Alma mater	Purdue University
Occupation	Computer programmer
Years active	1984–present
Known for	, the first implementation of a
Call-sign	K9OX

Howard G. "Ward" Cunningham (born May 26, 1949) is an American computer programmer who developed the first . A pioneer in both design patterns and extreme programming, he started programming the software in 1994 and installed it on the website of his software consultancy, Cunningham & Cunningham (commonly known by its domain name, c2.com), on March 25, 1995, as an add-on to the Portland Pattern Repository.

He currently lives in Beaverton, Oregon, and is a programmer at New Relic. Previously he was the Co-Creation Czar for CitizenGlobal. He is Nike's first Code for a Better World Fellow.

Cunningham was born in Michigan City, Indiana. He received his Bachelor's degree in interdisciplinary engineering (electrical engineering and computer science) and his master's degree in computer science from Purdue University. He is a founder of Cunningham & Cunningham, Inc. He has also served as Director of R&D at Wyatt Software and as Principal Engineer in the Tektronix Computer Research Laboratory. He is founder of The Hillside Group and has served as program chair of the Pattern Languages of Programming conference which it sponsors. Cunningham was part of the Smalltalk community. From December 2003 until October 2005, he worked for Microsoft Corporation in the "patterns & practices" group. From October 2005 to May 2007, he held the position of Director of Committer Community Development at the Eclipse Foundation.