Ward invented wiki and is proud that it is so often cloned. Ward was brought here by Google[L1 ] which cites this as the number one wiki site, a fact that he attributes to replacing ? with / in the url.
Ward likes perl and expects that he should like Tk/Tcl even more. He read a book on Tk/Tcl once, but found this knowledge didn't help a bit working on a program written in Tk/Tcl objects. He has since read the Unix AIM client code which seemed straightforward enough.
Ward met John Ousterhout once when they both worked on IC CAD. John probably doesn't remember this. Hint: it was after a talk about Corner Stitching.
-- CL responds: Ward, it is great to have you here!
I think you're wrong. This Wiki is indeed a successful one. However, people tell us it's only mediocre in its technology. Far more important than the separator advantage (do we all believe '/' is superior to '?'?) are social factors.
JCW nicely follows up, also on stardate May 23rd, 2005: this page has been around for a while. I think the only reason it came up again, is because someone felt an urge to spray a kilroy-was-here style message here :(
AM (23 september 2004) With respect to mediocre technology:
I suppose it would have been just as easy to create a Wiki with loads of editing functions, search facilities and so on. That, however, is not what makes a Wiki successful. This Wiki is particularly successful because an enthusiastic crowd of people contribute to it using devilishly simple-to-use techniques. I think that is far from mediocre - and quite in line with the maxim "It does not take a rocket scientist to program in Tcl"