Recommendations you can check.
by Ellen Ullman
Who uses, recommends or left Close to the Machine, in their own words: each a verbatim quote with a link to where it was said.
1 person
Ellen Ullman's Close to the Machine is a memoir I couldn't believe I hadn't read earlier. Many of her observations about engineering culture feel as relevant today as when she was a programmer in the 1980s
A July 2025 link roundup of what she read, watched and used that month.
2025-08-02·jasmi.news ↗
Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.
The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.
A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.
The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.
What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:
Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.