Life in code
by Ellen Ullman · first published 2017
18mentions
4recommended by
11HN commenters
2017–2026first – last mentioned
36% recommend64% neutral
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Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology, by Ellen Ullman An autobiography of a developer, and an author, looking back at her life. Narrated by the author. Might not be for everyone, but I really liked it.
on “Ask HN: Do you know any good audio books for developers?” ↗I like the recommendation at the end for Life In Code by Ellen Ullman. Definitely read it; it's very good and says a lot of things that need to be heard.
on “Software development: should we stop? Maybe we should” ↗An excellent presentation on the work of the Friedmans is A Life in Code: https://bookshop.org/books/a-life-in-code-pioneer-cryptanaly... but there are several other biographies. The government treated the Friedmans very badly considering how dependent it was on them. Ultimately…
on “Declassified Cold War code-breaking manual on solving 'impossible' puzzles” ↗I've been talking about this a lot lately, so maybe I'm repeating myself, but Ellen Ullman's (very good) book Life in Code she writes about Whitfield Diffie's (of Diffie-Hellman fame) speech at the 2000 Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference in Toronto. > "We were slaves to the mainframe! he said. Dumb terminals! That's…
on “Writing ARM64 Code for Apple Platforms” ↗…computing where users are in control that happened from the late 70's through most of the 90's. I've posted this quote here before, but I still think about it all the time. In Ellen Ullman's excellent book Life in Code she quotes Whitfield Diffie: > We were slaves to the mainframe! he said. Dumb terminals! That's all we had. We were powerless under the big machine's unyielding central control. Then we escaped to the…
on “GNOME 44” ↗I bet you'd like Ullman's book Life in Code. A passage early on that resonated with me is her report of a talk given by Whitfield Diffie: > We were slaves to the mainframe! he said. Dumb terminals! That's all we had. We were powerless under the…
on “Ellen Ullman wrote the most precise account of “computer culture” I have seen” ↗I really loved "Life in Code". The book's combination of intimate autobiography and job description, and a somewhat outsider's view on programming, which she sort of stumbled into, just felt right. I also liked the interview posted…
on “Ellen Ullman: We Have to Demystify Code (2017)” ↗…reality simulation we're all (okay, perhaps) living in? As far as haunted old tech: "We build our computers the way we build our cities - over time, without a plan, on top of ruins." - Ellen Ullman, Life in Code
on “Old tech is haunted” ↗…There really isn't a path for growth which means there's not a lot of reason for investment. I'm bummed about this and have been thinking about it a lot lately because I've been reading Ellen Ullman's Life in Code. In it she laments the fade out of the PC era (20 years ago!) and the loss of privacy and security and power that users had for a brief moment between mainframes and web apps.
on “Ask HN: 90s programmers, what did you expect the future of tech to look like?” ↗Ellen Ullman quotes Whitfield Diffie in her book Life in Code and I think he’s spot on: > We were slaves to the mainframe! he said. Dumb terminals! That's all we had. We were powerless under the big machine's unyielding central control. Then we escaped to the personal…
on “Web-based editor” ↗Perhaps it was left out in editing, or is made in Ullman's recently published book Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology.
on “Ellen Ullman on the importance of making algorithms accessible to the public” ↗I think you are right on this and it's a real bummer. In Ellen Ullman's book Life in Code, she writes about Whitfield Diffie's (of Diffie-Hellman fame) speech at the 2000 Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference in Toronto. > "We were slaves to the mainframe! he said. Dumb terminals! That's…
on “Apple is building the metaverse substrate” ↗…memoire that has some very nice capturances of this weird world, of the life of being a machine-speaker, a truth-finder, apart from the rest of the adrift weird world. Haven't picked it up but her new book (Life In Code, `17) yet. I really crave a lot more discourse on this. This is the most undersung reality. Programmers & would-be/could-be programmers should know. The world should know.
on “Ask HN: Year old CS student. Should I continue?” ↗…Video Game: Danger, Pleasure, and Obsession on the Virtual Frontline by David Sheff. This book explores the potential dangers of video games, as well as the pleasure and obsession that they can bring. Life In Code: A Personal History of Technology by Ellen Ullman. This book is a sequel to Ullman's first book, Readme. It tells the story of her continued work in Silicon Valley and her observations on the tech industry.…
on “The greatest tech books of all time” ↗“We build our computers the way we build our cities — over time, without a plan, on top of ruins.” ― Ellen Ullman, Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology
on “Kowloon Walled City: Heterotopia in a Space of Disappearance (2013)” ↗