[.ca] The Bug (ISBN 1400032350)

very real,not fiction,can be boring,DONT READ FIX EXPLANATIO:
I give a 5 star for realism. This books feels real. It is not fiction. A must read for engineers significant ones who are not engineers. The ending is not a disappointment, it is just another piece of reality. Most bugs are trivial to fix once they are diagnozed. The explanation of the bug fix IS a disappointment as it is not accurate. The book would have been better without the explanation. Don't read that part.

boring book.:
The basic storyline of The Bug has potential, but Ullman does not do a good job making the storyline interesting. Many connections are never quite made, and her character's connection to the story is kind of lame. From a litereary viewpoint the book just isnt very good. If you are interested in programming, all of the programming talk will probably be interesting, but the basic storyline is very lacking. the ending is also pretty lame. all in all, i wouldn't recommend this book unless you're interested in programmning, and even then its a little bit of a snore. sorry ms. ullman.

Use with discretion.:
This is worth reading if you're interested in computer programming, but, in any case, not wonderful. If you're not interested in computer programming, you should be able to follow it easily, but its virtues won't outweigh its flaws for you. I liked the bug best--the actual bug as explained, that is. Like some of the reviewers I'm a little sceptical that such a thing might go so long undetected, but so what? It's fun; it makes a point; and, anyway, close enough. Essentially, however, this novel is not plot driven; essentially it's a character (psychological) study, one that requires more skill than this first-time novelist can muster. Literary ambition alone doesn't suffice. About the prose: There are great swaths of sentence fragments. The author seems to think they lend an immediacy to the thing. I think they make it clumsy and cheap. I object (also) in particular to 1) the phrase "waiting on" to mean "waiting for" (only restaurant workers wait "on", and "on" is not an all-purpose preposition), to 2) the phrase "Noam Chomsky famously said..." ("famously" here--and everywhere--is superfluous and ugly; you can't indiscriminately add "ly" to every adjective you chance upon), and to 3) "academic" used as a noun (just say "college teacher" or something, if that's what you mean).

This Bug is Good:
The Bug. Kind of an odd title for a novel--what is novelist Ellen Ullman referring to? Is it the bug that has invaded a computer program designed by protagonist Ethan Levin in the mid-1980s, or is it also something less obvious, a deeper bug in Ethan's life. Ethan is pretty much all work, no play, and he has the disintegrating life--love life, friendships--to prove it. The program he has designed has a bug in it, a bug discovered by software tester Roberta Walton. Ethan spends much of the novel tracking the bug down, and helped, at times, by Roberta. The narrative moves forward on two paths--Roberta tells her side of the story from her 2000 vantage point, while an omniscient narrator fills us in on Ethan's disintegrating life. This is a well written story--the plot isn't all that clever or unique, but neither is it predictable. There is much in here of computer codes--but that shouldn't turn the computer neophyte off. I am sure much of that went over my head, but don't think that affected my enjoyment of the novel. The Bug is an entertaining, quick read.

The Human Side of the Technology Equation:
Ellen Ullman has once again written a book intertwining the technical, emotional, personal and professional sides of computer programmers' lives. In this book, which is her first novel, a programmer at a startup in the 1980's chases a flakey bug. That bug ultimately proves to be a maddening obsession for him, taking a toll on his professional and personal life. On the plus side, this book was an easy read; Ullman is a fluid, entertaining writer, and can explain the technical details with a poet's perspective. She realistically describes the typical life of a programmer -- the meetings, swarms of elusive bugs, demanding schedules, the thrills of working on cutting-edge projects, the quirky humor of programmers, and so on. Interspersed with the action are philosophical musings about computer technology, "real" life, and the parallels between the two. Furthermore, as she did so well in "Close to the Machine," Ullman is able to describe the supremely logical world of software development and draw us into it to make us sense and understand the source of programmer's excitement and frustration. Like Ullman herself, the novel's narrator was not a computer programmer at first, but drifted into it. The result is a fresh, lively, fluid description of computer technology that a pure, "hard-core" techie probably couldn't capture. On the minus side, the novel had just a few drawbacks. First, the ultimate outcome for the main character was slightly disappointing for me (I won't reveal the conclusion here, though I will say I could think of a slightly better ending). Second, others have complained that the bug turned out to be too simple once it was found; however, I think that the complexity (or lack thereof) of the bug is besides the point of the novel, since its elusive nature is what drives the novel and characters forward. Third, Ullman tries to make the novel have two main characters -- Roberta, a software tester whose narration dominates the beginning and end of the novel, and Ethan, the programmer whose actions dominate the middle of the novel. The shifts between these two voices are mildly disorienting, and having a single character narrating the entire story would have been slightly better. Overall, though, I believe the plusses outweigh the minuses, and I'd recommend this novel to any budding computer programmer, or anyone interested in software or technology. If you enjoyed other books in this vein -- "The Soul of a New Machine" or "Microserfs" or Ullman's previous book, "Close to the Machine" -- then you'll enjoy this one. Despite the technical subject matter, this novel is ultimately more about the characters than it is about the technology, so I'd recommend it to anyone who is interested in the human side of the technology equation.