Ellen Ullman is an American computer programmer and

author An author is the writer of a book, article, play, mostly written work. A broader definition of the word "author" states: "''An author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility f ...

. 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

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's ''

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''. 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. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

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Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

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 San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

Bibliography

Books

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

Novels

* ''The Bug'' New York, N.Y. : Talese, 2003. * ''By Blood: A Novel'' New York, N.Y. : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012.

Selected articles and essays

* ''Out of Time: Reflections on the Programming Life'' (included in the 1995 collection ''Resisting the Virtual Life'', ) * ''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''

References

External links

Interview with Salon magazine
(October 9, 1997)

(Fall 1998)

(May 21, 1999)
Interview with SF Gate
(May 8, 2002)

on The

WELL A well is an excavation or structure created in the ground by digging, driving, or drilling to access liquid resources, usually water. The oldest and most common kind of well is a water well, to access groundwater in underground aquifers. The ...

(January, 2004)
Audio interview with Jon Udell
(October 6, 2006) {{DEFAULTSORT:Ullman, Ellen Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Writers from California Cornell University alumni American women computer scientists American computer scientists 21st-century American women