Bugged out

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Bugged out

"The Bug" author Ellen Ullman talks about the Gothic terrors that lurk
between the rational lines of computer code.

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By Scott Rosenberg

salon.com, May 16, 2003

When C.P. Snow first identified the rift between "two cultures" of
scientists and literary intellectuals who could neither understand nor
communicate with each other, it was 1959, and computing was in its
infancy. Today, in many fields, the denizens of Snow's two cultures are
reaching across the gap. But computer programming remains a vast unknown
country to most outsiders -- even as more and more of our work and our
culture stands on its foundation.

Ellen Ullman has lived in that country, and ever since the 1997
publication of her memoir, "Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its
Discontents," she has meticulously and articulately chronicled its
customs and dangers. An English major turned programmer turned writer,
she has a knack for talking about the experience of writing code --
"thought that works," as one of her characters puts it -- in ways that
nonprogrammers can understand. She does so without glorifying the
creators of software, as scribes of the Internet boom would; but she
doesn't trivialize their work or their lives, either. She does full
justice to the highs and lows of the programming life -- as both an
unnatural punishment for the human organism and an invigorating
challenge to the human brain.

"The Bug," Ullman's new novel, tells the tale of Ethan Levin, a
programmer bedeviled by an elusive, infuriating bug that resists every
attempt to corner it. As the hunt for this software nemesis grows
fiercer, Levin's personal life unravels.

full: http://www.salon.com/books/int/2003/05/16/ullman/index_np.html
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