The Bug - BookWyrm

Paperback, 368 pages

English language

Published July 13, 2004 by Anchor.

ISBN:: 978-1-4000-3235-8
OCLC Number:: 56079814

(6 reviews)

In 1984, at the dawn of the personal-computer era, novice software tester Roberta Walton stumbles across a bug. She brings it to its inadvertent creator, longtime programmer Ethan Levin, and the two embark on a hunt for the elusive bug, nicknamed “The Jester” for its tendency to appear randomly and only at the least opportune moments, jeopardizing the fate of the company. Ethan’s attempts to find a solution soon become a frightening obsession that threatens to destroy both his professional and personal life. Roberta, on the other hand, is drawn to the challenge. Forced to learn how to program, and seeking refuge from her own private troubles, she becomes enthralled with learning to speak the computer’s language. Expertly merging code with prose, big ideas with intensely personal stories, Ellen Ullman brilliantly illuminates the space between human beings and computers—a space we occupy every day as we peer into our monitors.

5 editions

Jonathan Arnold reviewed The bug by Ellen Ullman

Review of 'The bug' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This might sound like damning with faint praise, but this is easily the best novel I have ever read about programming, software development and QA. Ms. Ullman was a computer programmer for 20 years and it shows. There were very few technical mishaps and even those could be explained by, as she said in the afterword:

[blockquote]A certain degree of accuracy has therefore been sacrificed in the interest of making systems comprehensible and interesting to nontechnical readers. These inaccuracies do not necessarily reflect the ignorance of the author, although in specific instances they might.[/blockquote]

This book tells the story of a programmer and a QA engineer in a startup. She reports a bug in the user interface, during the early days of a graphical user interface. Sometimes (a programmer's worst nightmare) the whole system would freeze up while getting used. And, thru various slip ups, a core file is never …

This might sound like damning with faint praise, but this is easily the best novel I have ever read about programming, software development and QA. Ms. Ullman was a computer programmer for 20 years and it shows. There were very few technical mishaps and even those could be explained by, as she said in the afterword:

[blockquote]A certain degree of accuracy has therefore been sacrificed in the interest of making systems comprehensible and interesting to nontechnical readers. These inaccuracies do not necessarily reflect the ignorance of the author, although in specific instances they might.[/blockquote]

This book tells the story of a programmer and a QA engineer in a startup. She reports a bug in the user interface, during the early days of a graphical user interface. Sometimes (a programmer's worst nightmare) the whole system would freeze up while getting used. And, thru various slip ups, a core file is never grabbed. Ethan Levin, the developer, and Roberta Walton, a failed literature professor QA engineer, don't realize just yet how all consuming this bug, UI-1017, will become. It is a fulcrum for their future, leading one into success and one into failure.

Wow. Ms. Ullman just gets it. As a computer programmer for way more years than I care to think, I found myself nodding my head in agreement time and time again. The parts where the dev team and management clashed over schedules particularly hit home. Management loves their hard and fast numbers - "There are this many bugs and it will take exactly this long to fix them." As I said once in a meeting about shipping - you can always ship the software, so don't ask me if it can be shipped. I will tell you the bugs and it is above my pay grade to decide if they are "stoppers" or not.

She gets into the fractious nature of a small startup, with all the pressures within to get stuff done. She also knows about the tense relationship between QA and the developers, who don't want to hear about bugs, but especially don't want to hear about bugs that only show up "sometimes". Give me a bug I can recreate, and I can give you a fix.

But this bug, nicknamed "The Jester", never gets pinned down and it slowly drives Ethan nearly mad. His personal life is a mess and, despite his interesting twist on Conway's Game of Life, Ethan never feels like a programmer with a complete grasp on things. And Berta gets dragged into his free fall as well.

While it definitely gets wonderfully technical, I think Ms. Ullman does a fantastic job of, like she says, making it interesting and accessible to the non-technical reader. Of course, it is all second nature to me, but I think even if you aren't a tech person, you will find this very interesting. And if you are a developer, or in QA, or even a manager of either, this is a must read. A truly fascinating take on the world of a software developer. Her earlier memoir, [b:Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents|486625|Close to the Machine Technophilia and Its Discontents|Ellen Ullman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1437122620l/486625.SY75.jpg|474906], has jumped onto my To Read list!