The Bug

I finally found a book that seemed to perfectly blend technology with philosophy and great story-telling. The Bug is one of those rare fictional works that is not afraid to take a long hard look at the technology industry and the people that make it happen. Written by Ellen Ullman, supposed to be a computer industry pioneer and famous for her other book 'Close to the Machine', the events in the book take place in 1984, when the first of the silicon valley pioneers were entering the picture.

The story revolves around three characters. Ethan Levin - the nerdy programmer, UI1017 - the user interface bug (for non-programmers, a bug is a software error/glitch) that causes screens to crash unexpectedly, and Berta Walton - the tester who finds the bug. UI1017 starts of as an innocuous 'just another bug'. However, it's knack of making random appearances at the most inopportune of moments and the difficulty in recreating it earns it the name 'The Jester' within the company. As the story unfolds, we find that Ethan's life somehow seems to be inexplicably intertwined with that of the bug. His personal life starts to unravel, and his quirky personality becomes more and more eccentric. The author provides a realistic, and surprisingly touching, look into the mind of a programmer. The descriptions of the tools, software and hardware of the era give the book an authentic feel and will leave current programmers thanking their stars for living in an era with interfaces pioneered by Apple and Microsoft and evolved software platforms like Java.

Since i'm into software myself, I can testify to how irritating and hard to find a bug can get. Infact, somewhere in the book, Ethan tells himself to stop looking for the bug and let it find him. The harder you look for it, the more it will evade you. The action, if you could call it that, thickens towards the end leading to a whopper of a climax. The bug, when it is finally discovered, gives you one of those "ommigosh" moments. But by then, 'The Jester' has changed everyone's life irrevocably, with disastrous effects.

I really enjoyed the book not only because it was both knowledgeable and well-written but also because Ullman handles the subject with sensitivity and a deep understanding of the technology industry, a skill that probably only comes out of being a techie herself. If you are a programmer or a tester or a software vendor or a project manager or hold one of the hundreds of titles in the software industry, you should consider reading this book. If your girlfriend/boyfriend or spouse is in the software industry or if you're considering attending a party thrown by some software guys, you should definitely read this book.