Book Review: The Bug
I finally finished reading The Bug by Ellen Ullman, author of Close to the Machine: Technophila and Its Discontents (which I haven't read). This took a while to read, not because it isn't fascinating but because I had it at a friend's house and so read it only sporadically.
This is the intriguing novel about Ethan Levin, a typical low-level programmer who thought he was hot stuff until bug UI-1017 (the 1,017th bug in the user interface in the project) turned his life to hell. The bug lived for 357 days (that's a little bit of a spoiler but not much), affecting both Ethan and his co-workers.
I found the novel to be a little bit tedious at times, but otherwise a rather fascinating read. I was particularly fascinated by the culture of the company in which Ethan and the bug thrived for so long before descending into the pits of despair. Debugging is such an art and I'm amazed that the author could build a good read around a single bug. She has long experience in the software development world and, while the technologies and situations are deliberately made up to fit the fiction, incorporated her experience in the weaving of the tale. But don't crack it open expecting to learn any debugging tips or strategies; it isn't intended to be instructional.
I'm not sure that I'd buy this book knowing now what I didn't know then, but would certainly get it from a library or borrow it from a friend.