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A review by spygrl1
The Bug by Ellen Ullman
4.0
It's an engrossing depiction of the early days of computer technology and computer start-ups -- similar to [b:Plowing the Dark|23015|Plowing the Dark|Richard Powers|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1167388696s/23015.jpg|3932] in the accuracy with which is captures the thought processes, foibles, and lifestyles of those we call geeks. The Bug focuses on two employees of a database start-up: Ethan Levin, a prickly programmer with a neurotic sense of inadequacy and a spiralling personal life, and Roberta Walton, a refugee from academia who first scorns and then embraces the arcana of the computer.
Programming is always an iterative process: code, check, re-code, check, repair code, ad infinitum. Bugs are standard. But there's something almost spooky -- something malevolent -- about bug UI-1107. A bug first spotted by Roberta and assigned to Ethan, a bug that crashes the system in a spectacle of bleeps and smeared pixels, a bug that seems to delight in capering before venture capitalist and potential customers, an elusive bug that evades all efforts to pin it down. Will Ethan find and fix the bug, or will the obsessive quest to track it down destroy Ethan?
Programming is always an iterative process: code, check, re-code, check, repair code, ad infinitum. Bugs are standard. But there's something almost spooky -- something malevolent -- about bug UI-1107. A bug first spotted by Roberta and assigned to Ethan, a bug that crashes the system in a spectacle of bleeps and smeared pixels, a bug that seems to delight in capering before venture capitalist and potential customers, an elusive bug that evades all efforts to pin it down. Will Ethan find and fix the bug, or will the obsessive quest to track it down destroy Ethan?