Ellen Ullman

Ellen Ullman is an American computer programmer and author. She has written books, articles, and essays that analyze the human side of the world of computer programming.

She has owned a consulting firm and worked as technology commentator for NPR's All Things Considered. Her breakthrough book was non-fiction: Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its Discontents.

Life
Ullman's adoptive father's family included computer scientists and mathematicians who had a major impact on her decision to pursue software engineering, a field for which she did "not have native talent." Ullman earned a B.A. in English at Cornell University in the early 1970s. She began working professionally in 1978 as a programmer of electronic data interchange applications and graphical user interfaces.

She eventually began writing about her experiences as a programmer. From 1994 until 1996, she published articles in Harper's Magazine and in the collections Resisting the Virtual Life and Wired Women. She lives in San Francisco.

Books

 * Close to the Machine: Technophilia and its Discontents San Francisco : City Lights Books, 1997. ISBN 9780872863323
 * Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology New York: MCD, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017. ISBN 9780374534516

Novels

 * The Bug New York, N.Y. : Talese, 2003. ISBN 0-385-50860-3
 * By Blood: A Novel New York, N.Y. : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012. ISBN 9780374117559

Selected articles and essays

 * Out of Time: Reflections on the Programming Life (included in the 1995 collection Resisting the Virtual Life, ISBN 0-87286-299-2)
 * The Myth of Order. The real lesson of Y2K is that software operates just like any natural system: out of control
 * The dumbing-down of programming
 * How to Be a 'Woman Programmer'
 * Twilight of the crypto-geeks: Lone-wolf digital libertarians are beginning to abandon their faith in technology uber alles and espouse suspiciously socialist-sounding ideas.
 * Geeks Win: A survey of the oddballs who write the codes that make the 21st-century world go round
 * The Orphans of Invention
 * The Boss in the Machine
 * Identity Stolen? Take a Number
 * Dennis Ritchie