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Questions

1. We know a little bit of who you are, you are Ward Cunningham but what do you do at Microsoft? What are you part of, which group and what is your job here?
2. You just said for so many years, everybody of course recognizes the Wiki and your work with patterns and so forth. When you say we don't need architects what do you mean by that?
3. Sort of the codification of that experience?
4. Just sort of achieve a critical mass?
5. The notion of patterns has a vocabulary.
6. So I guess, people are sometimes curious about the history of things and so forth and I am just sort of curious, how did this whole, you have been there since the beginning, how did some of this whole patterns movement come about? I know you are involved with the Pattern Languages Of Programming conference and so forth. What was it like?
7. You mentioned a second ago the idea of patterns as a vocabulary for us to be able to express concepts like singleton. But you said that is just the beginning. Do you think there is more that we can do with patterns?
8. When you say discipline-to-discipline are you talking about something else computer science like architecture?
9. I guess you are speaking of like C# to databases or...?
10. I remember five to seven years ago as patterns were starting to grow, there was a lot of media interest behind patterns, you started hearing people talking about patterns this patterns that, and then there was, as there always is, the media-induced expectation was not met, ; at some point in time people said "oh patterns were overhyped, patterns have failed us!" Do you think that is a fair criticism? If I am a new programmer, if I have never heard of patterns before, I have never known what patterns are, what can I expect out of this, what can I expect to get for my trouble for getting involved in some of this stuff?
11. I guess if we could invest you with global, dominant power, how would you build that, when you say you want to see that community built?
12. One of the things I know that you are peripherally involved with, not necessarily directly involved with, was the whole genesis of extreme programming at the C3 Group at Chrysler with Kent and Ron.
13. This is where a lot of those principles of testing goes in to support?
14. You mentioned that you had discovered Smalltalk at that point and I know that a lot of Smalltalkers in the world are extremely dedicated to their language, one might even suggest perhaps more of a cult than a programming language.
15. Are there some features of Smalltalk that you would really like to see in .NET?
16. When you bring up the notion of social elements in programming and one of the more contentious points of extreme programming is that of pair programming. You've got the stereotypical programmer who wears the same shirt to work everyday, he's got passing familiarity with the shower in his apartment and so forth and of course nobody wants to be near this guy after lunch right Now you're saying that you need to sit down for four hours at a stretch with this guy and crank out some code A lot of people are very uncomfortable with that. Have you run into any of these kinds of problems?
17. So, is extreme programming an exercise in 'pattern mining'? You know that is what they always call discovering patterns.
18. That brings up one of the other tenets of extreme programming, that people tend to have issues with which is the design for today tenet A number of people have taken that to mean do not design period and I am curious to hear your thoughts and reaction on that.
19. Now you bring up again the notion of customer as a crucial tenet of XP. Is that different for building a product like Microsoft does than for building an enterprise system like for example what the C3 group did? Does that change XP?
20. Yes I remember from my college classes for example, the cost of change curve. It's 100,000 times more expensive to make the change later than it was before and and being taught all that and you know basically you are saying that that is not the case any more?
21. I've got to ask this question. You are a gentleman of some stature within the community and you sort of close your eyes and imagine for a moment you are at a conference and a young programmer comes up to you and says "Mr. Cunningham I love your work, I am such a fan and asks that crucial question, "What can you tell me to make me a great programmer?" What advise do you have for this guy, what can you tell him, what things does he need to know, what things does he have to look for?
22. That old comment about most scientific discoveries do not begin with "Eureka!", but "That's funny."