Rating: 
Summary: An intimate "The Soul of a New Machine"
Review: Ellen Ullmann has created a wonderful novel about the awkward interfaces between programmers and users, programming and aging, and technology and humanity. The first chapter's description of the addiction on shared mind during small team development is a wonder.
Rating:
Summary: An intimate "The Soul of a New Machine"
Review: Ellen Ullmann has created a wonderful novel about the awkward interfaces between programmers and users, programming and aging, and technology and humanity. The first chapter's description of the addiction on shared mind during small team development is a wonder.
Rating: 
Summary: This Side Of OK
Review: For a computer geek like me, it was interesting enough, but nothing that I will carry with me for more than 5 minutes.
Rating: 
Summary: Candid account of a programmer's life in San Francisco.
Review: Here is a candid account of the life of a software engineer who runs her own computer consulting business out of a live-work loft in San Francisco's Multimedia Gulch. Immersed in the abstract world of information, algorithms, and networks, she would like to give in to the seductions of the programmer's world, where "weird logic dreamers" like herself live "close to the machine." Still, she is keenly aware that body and soul are not mechanical: desire, love, and the need to communicate face to face don't easily fit into lines of code or clicks in a Web browser. At every turn, she finds she cannot ignore the social and philosophical repercussions of her work. As Ullman sees it, the cool world of cyberculture is neither the death of civilization nor its salvation--it is the vulnerable creation of people who are not so sure of just where they're taking us all.
ADVANCE PRAISE FOR CLOSE TO THE MACHINE:
"Ullman wittily spills the beans about the technology on which we all depend."
--PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"There are no crazed hackers here; no zen master software moguls; no media stereotypes; just a wonderfully written book about Ullman's days and nights at the heart of the new machine." I recommend it with unfettered enthusiasm."--JON CARROLL, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
"Ullman's work has the keenness of all my favorite writing. Here her talent enables readers to explore intimately, and without forced profundity, one of the biggest questions of our time: What is it about the numerical, seemingly inhuman world of computing that holds such powerful, wholly human allure?"--BRAD WIENERS, EDITOR, WIRED BOOKS
"This book is a little masterpiece, an exquisitely melancholy cry from a body disappearing into the machine. It is a wrenching swan-song for human beings. I have never read anything like it because nothing like it could have been written before. Here is the perfect way to say goodbye to the millenium."--ANDREI CODRESCU
"Computer programmers are remaking the world. Here is ground truth about that world-making and brilliant insider critique of it. The reader vibrates between delight and alarm on every page. It's wonderful to see such a blending of code craft and word craft (and no small measure of life craft) in the author. It is a perfect book for City Lights--longstanding purveyor of subversive honesty and art."--STEWART BRAND
"Ullman's memoir of life in the electronic world is a reckoning, a warning, a seduction. It is also very funny."--Rebecca Brown, author of "Gifts of the Body" and "The Terrible Girls."
"Ellen Ullman, a software engineer, writes with the energy of Boswell, the clarity of Orwell, and the warmth of Montaigne. You may wonder: how could a software engineer write so well? Ullman is a wonderful writer, and "Close to the Machine" is a wonderful book.--JOHN GEHL, EDITOR, EDUCOM REVIEW
Rating:
Summary: A story of the modern day alchemist, outstandingly narrated
Review: I am torn between giving Ullman's book one star and five stars. No rate in-between seems to be suitable. Let's start with five stars. Once I opened the book I could not put it down. Having turned the last page, I went back, re-read several parts and made notes on margins. To me, the book is about three things at once. First, it is an autobiography of the run-of-the-mill programmer, whose professional and personal lives are tightly intertwined. Second, it is a first-hand account of gold rush era software development. The impeccably styled story has no sugar, no gloss, 'no feel good, everybody wins' stuff. Ignorance, brilliance, arrogance, raw greed and insatiable desire to control the world are presented in full honesty. "In my profession, software engineering," Ullman writes about AIDS database project, "there is something almost shameful in this helpful, social services system we're building. The whole project smacks of 'end users' - those contemptible, oblivious people who just want to use the stuff we write and do not care how we did it." I wrote on a margin: "Why would they care! . Drooling over your tech savvy is not in their job descriptions." Later I regretted my acerbic remark. Ullman did care for her users to the extend, which the pace of gold rush allowed her to have such sentiments. After all, 18 months with dusty social services was an eternity in the software world. The time came for her to jump into her red sports car and, at the speed of 80 mph, to move to the more dignified project with the latest and greatest technologies. (To a person, who reads this review: I am not being sarcastic. I truly admired the author's ability to write without self-justification of her good and bad deeds.) Third, this book is an amazing attempt to pass modern day alchemy for engineering. This is where Ullman lost all her stars in my eyes. Engineering is a planned activity based on science. As a rule, it produces very predictable results. None of three projects, which Ullman describes in the book, can be called a product of engineering. During the AIDS database project, she got around to meet her end users only 8 months into the project. Her sole concern at that point was "to save the system", regardless of its inadequacy to users' needs. The second project - patching a networking software in the failing start-up - was no better. The project was considered a triumph, when the programmers managed to demo the system that crashed "exactly once a day" (not twice, as before). The third project - a direct payroll deposit application - was outright scary. The software was written even without preliminary work flow diagram. Go figure what it could do with your honest pay. I am giving Ullman's book FOUR stars after all - for its powerful, passionate and honest writing. It touched my nerve. Oh, it did! Even the little lie about engineering did not spoil the impression.
Rating:
Summary: A story of the modern day alchemist, outstandingly narrated
Review: I am torn between giving Ullman's book one star and five stars. No rate in-between seems to be suitable. Let's start with five stars. Once I opened the book I could not put it down. Having turned the last page, I went back, re-read several parts and made notes on margins. To me, the book is about three things at once. First, it is an autobiography of the run-of-the-mill programmer, whose professional and personal lives are tightly intertwined. Second, it is a first-hand account of gold rush era software development. The impeccably styled story has no sugar, no gloss, 'no feel good, everybody wins' stuff. Ignorance, brilliance, arrogance, raw greed and insatiable desire to control the world are presented in full honesty. "In my profession, software engineering," Ullman writes about AIDS database project, "there is something almost shameful in this helpful, social services system we're building. The whole project smacks of 'end users' - those contemptible, oblivious people who just want to use the stuff we write and do not care how we did it." I wrote on a margin: "Why would they care! . Drooling over your tech savvy is not in their job descriptions." Later I regretted my acerbic remark. Ullman did care for her users to the extend, which the pace of gold rush allowed her to have such sentiments. After all, 18 months with dusty social services was an eternity in the software world. The time came for her to jump into her red sports car and, at the speed of 80 mph, to move to the more dignified project with the latest and greatest technologies. (To a person, who reads this review: I am not being sarcastic. I truly admired the author's ability to write without self-justification of her good and bad deeds.) Third, this book is an amazing attempt to pass modern day alchemy for engineering. This is where Ullman lost all her stars in my eyes. Engineering is a planned activity based on science. As a rule, it produces very predictable results. None of three projects, which Ullman describes in the book, can be called a product of engineering. During the AIDS database project, she got around to meet her end users only 8 months into the project. Her sole concern at that point was "to save the system", regardless of its inadequacy to users' needs. The second project - patching a networking software in the failing start-up - was no better. The project was considered a triumph, when the programmers managed to demo the system that crashed "exactly once a day" (not twice, as before). The third project - a direct payroll deposit application - was outright scary. The software was written even without preliminary work flow diagram. Go figure what it could do with your honest pay. I am giving Ullman's book FOUR stars after all - for its powerful, passionate and honest writing. It touched my nerve. Oh, it did! Even the little lie about engineering did not spoil the impression.
Rating:
Summary: good bits but doesn't cohere
Review: I bought this book on the strength of some excellent excerpts that appeared on the web (in Salon). These were insightful and entertaining meditiations on the life of a programmer, what it's like to get close to the reality of a developing system. However, the rest of the book turned out to be mostly chapters from the author's life and just weren't all that interesting, or when they were, did not go anywhere (her relationship with a young cypherpunk had a lot of possibilities, but both the relatiohship and the writing about it just sort of petered out). Worth reading, but somewhat of a letdown.
Rating: 
Summary: No critique
Review: I loved the pace. All what you knew is all just like this, trailing off into your future/ahead past. The edge is home, who tagged it ever as lonely? I'm 35 and young at this, and she mystified me as me.
Rating:
Summary: Best book on "computer culture" I've read.
Review: I read this book a year ago when it first came out and loved it. I've re-read it just to enjoy Ellen Ullman's terrific writing. She is a GREAT writer. Ellen Ullman uses her life in the fast lane to comment on parts of cyber-culture that we rarely talk about but ought to. It isn't political or technical. It's more social commentary.
Rating:
Summary: Technology in Human/Personal Terms
Review: If you're fascinated by the impacts of computer technology in personal and human terms, then you'll enjoy this book. On the surface, Ullman gives us a glimpse into the life of a consulting software engineer musing about the meaning and impact of technology. Ullman's world is filled with machine-like programmers drawn to the supremely logical world of software development, as well as managers who don't truly understand the technology or programmers that they are managing. Like a true techie, Ullman can easily convey rush of excitement when a debugged system finally *works* -- but unlike a true techie, she can just as easily describe the quirky, mechanical personalities of the people working "close to the machine(s)." Throughout, she intersperses some thoughts about her career, ranging from the stress of keeping up techno-savvy hot-shots, to the risks of working for startups, to the real impact "virtual companies" on society. Ullman's style was witty, insightful, and a joy to read -- I easily devoured this book in one day. In the end, this book is more about people than it is about technology, so I'd recommend it to anyone who is interested in the human side of the technology equation.
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