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The Bug by Ellen Ullman

Posted by michael on from the evil-geniuses-for-a-better-tomorrow dept.

Never Rock Fila writes "On the front page of tomorrow's New York Times Book Review, a slightly breathless but overdue enthusiastic review of Ellen Ullman's new novel, The Bug. The review acknowledges that 'Ullman has already established herself as an indispensable voice out of the world of technology' -- if you haven't read her first book, a memoir, Close to the Machine, read that too -- and it's nice to see a mainstream publication like the Times, the gold standard of book reviews as I understand it, giving such prominent and positive attention to a novel by a former 'software engineer' that's all about getting inside the mind of a programmer, even concluding 'If more contemporary novels delivered news this relevant and wise they'd have to stop declaring the death of the novel.' The reviewer, one Benjamin Anastas, has the chops to develop a sustained comparison to Mary Shelley, to legitimately place the 1984 computer programmers at the center of the novel among 'all the best characters in fiction,' and to declare the book 'thrilling and intellectually fearless.'"

8 of 1,547 comments (clear)

  1. Ellen Ullman Stuff by the+end+of+britain · · Score: 5, Informative

    Salon.com loves Ellen Ullman almost as much as I do. Read excerpts from The Bug here: http://archive.salon.com/books/int/2003/05/16/ullm an/index_np.html You can read articles by Ullman here: http://archive.salon.com/directory/topics/ellen_ul lman/ Salon is free as long as you watch a little commercial (C'mon--its 10 secondds, and then you get to read Ulllman--for free!!!)

    --
    "Oh, the tragedy of math gone wrong. I can't even talk about it." -Wil Wheaton http://www.wilwheaton.net
  2. The Bug Available on e-Book by Opinari · · Score: 3, Informative

    FYI, Palm Digital Media has Ms. Ullman's tome available for the Palm Reader.

  3. Re:Strange review by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Try this...

    username: slashdot321
    password: slashdot321

    Enjoy. :-)

  4. B & N instead by truthsearch · · Score: 4, Informative

    A little offtopic, but I'd like to see book links point to somewhere else, like Barnes & Noble. After all the coverage on /. of the amazon.com patents I thought this would have been obvious. Let's not support software patents and shop somewhere else instead. Here are the B&N links:

    The Bug
    Close to the Machine

    --
    Developers: We can use your help.
  5. Stay Far Away from "Close to the Machine" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    I was tricked (in retrospect) into reading "Close to the Machine" by a fellow graduate student who similarly cheerleaded for the tech-informed literary prowess of Ms. Ullman. I was sorely dissapointed by that outing (was I expecting too much? I doubt it). The problem was that "Close to the Machine" was a good literary effort when measured with the but-I-am-a-programmer stick and a bad book when measure with the a-book-is-just-a-book stick. I hope that this book is better, but I'll wait for the reviews (from book reviewers, not geek cheeleaders) to come in first.

  6. Re:Ullman's Programming the Post-Human by ullman · · Score: 5, Informative

    That's funny but unfortunately not true. You must be confusing me with Ellen Degeneres or Tracy Ullman (or someone; there's nothing on E! online for me). I did many things in college, but softcore porn just wasn't among them. In any case, I'll stick to writing.

  7. Great Book by Bugmaster · · Score: 3, Informative
    I just finished the book - at the urging of the Salon review. One way I can describe it is "Pi in book form". You can literally feel the insanity creeping into one of the main character's minds... It gets even scarier when you see the characters go through the same emotional upheavals that you yourself do when coding. Really scary stuff... The book is very, very realistic. You can see that the author actually understands the programmers and the QA testers she writes about -- as opposed to, say, the mainstream media which still seems to be fixated on the 13-year old scr33pt k1ddi3 image.

    Let me put it this way: this book literally made me fear for my own sanity. Now, if that's not a good endorsement, I don't know what is.

    --
    >|<*:=
  8. a few abstract concepts: how about FACTS by stanwirth · · Score: 2, Informative

    You said: lemme introduce you to a few abstract concepts like fiction or artistic license.I don't believe the narrator of "Close to the Machine" is Ms. Ullman herself.
    in response to my comment that in "Closer to the Machine" she gets intimate with clients and co-workers during the project even

    Mr. Jpeg: did you read it? Closer to the Machine is a MEMOIR.

    From the spamazon Editorial Review of Closer to the Machine by Cliff Barney:

    Author Ellen Ullman, an independent computer programmer, holds little back in recounting her experiences. She discusses her business career, her approach to software and her sexual adventures, all with the same frank detachment.
    Read it and weep. What I find so disturbing is the non-technical community's (read: Salon, Book Editors) lack of censure for her non-professional approach.

    And, The Bug--oh!! A bug that only happens sometimes at different places in the code? Christ on a bicycle, hasn't she ever fixed a freakin' memory leak before? Corruption she's clearly familiar with, but this kind has a blindingly obvious Simple solution. Instrument the code with Purify or Insure++, or Electric Fence or at least check where and how memory is being allocated and deallocated. This isn't rocket science, you know. Oh well, guess that's the difference between her "20 years of programming" and my 25.

    Sure The Bug is fiction, but it's fiction based on a truly lame approach to debugging.