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Ellen Ullman, Ullman Ellen: Bug (2013, Pushkin Press, Limited)

English language

Published Oct. 31, 2013 by Pushkin Press, Limited.

ISBN:
978-1-908968-14-2
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(7 reviews)

5 editions

Review of 'The bug' on 'Goodreads'

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 …

Review of 'The bug' on 'Goodreads'

okay i kind of rolled my eyes at the summary but this turned out to be a solid, engaging, philosophical horror story about a bug that destroys a programmer's life and i am here for it

developers will almost certainly enjoy this, and i may also try recommending it to less-technical friends who don't understand my job

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Subjects

  • Fiction, general