Q&A: Ellen Ullman / Programmer turned novelist talks about computers, writing and the world we live in: "The Bug has several code samples in it, and I found that to write
even such short routines, I had to imagine the shape of the whole system
they were part of. And, immediately, I slipped right back into the coder's
mind-set, hours going by in a kind of ferocious anxious humming. It was
hugely pleasurable; it was exhausting. I soon found I was using code to
avoid writing -- oh, I'll just fiddle with this little section here -- and a
whole day would go by without my having written a scene or a line of
dialogue. So I had to put the code aside."