by russell bell, Mar 5, 1998

In Close to the Machine (1997, City Lights, San Francisco) Ellen Ullman tells stories of her life as a software engineer. Self-taught, she rose from a novice programmer teaching herself to a highly-paid consultant managing development projects, teaching herself. Not complete as an autobiography and too immediate as a memoir she tells the true story of programming (She thinks that anyone who knows how it really happens would never ride an airplane or put money in a bank again) as a practical craft by one who has to make it work and sees the others (vice-presidents who think they make it work by fiat, users who think it works by magic) who do not understand the process.

She remembers her father, a businessman of an age now past who believed in jobs, workers, and real estate, contrasting his world with her virtual world. She tells the story of her relationship with a self-described 'cypherpunk' (a rebel programmer who specializes in cracking encryption schemes and making his own unbreakable cypher). She sees how the potential of computers launches people into collecting data for data's sake, users taking on the logic of the machine. She does not pretend she has an answer to the problems that people may create with computers but she recognizes them and that we may not solve them but that we may change to accommodate them. She misgives this with uncertainty.

She does not paint a heroic picture of programmers, though she admires them. She tells the story of a start-up company on a roller-coaster ride of alternating approval and disapproval of venture capitalists, finally looking for an exit strategy when a 'buddy' hired as president leaves after a month to start his own company across the street. They decide to get the initial product ready in the last few weeks to make a sell-out possible. The engineers who no longer have much incentive work as hard as ever and take pride in getting their code working. The managers and salespeople (and such trash) have nothing to do but bite their nails and hope it all works out: she feels sorry for them. If you don't have an idea how programmers work, this book will give you a feel for it.