There are many “too real” moments in Clifford Stoll’s book The Cuckoo’s Egg, as the protagonist, Cliff, goes on a journey of troubleshooting and navigating government bureaucracy to catch a hacker he discovered in his university’s research computers. For one, Cliff’s narrations through his troubleshooting methodology was was a far cry from many of the depictions of “hackers” and “computer wizard” troubleshooting seen in many books and movies. It was apt, sensible, and effective, and satisfyingly so. But Cliff also had to navigate the bureaucracies of both his organization and the government. Delays, hiccups, and feasibility challenges seemed to roadblock Cliff at every turn in his attempt to catch the hacker. In my opinion, this is a realistic depiction of the non-technical types of challenges programmers face. Even if your job doesn’t involve direct government agency interaction, your corporate structure likely entails a sticky fair ride line of tangled red tape.
Another realistic aspect was Cliff’s struggle to prioritize and achieve work-life-balance during the hacker investigation. This is a struggle all too real for many programmers, as we all face spurts of “crunch time” time and again. Despite Cliff’s partner’s attempts to keep him in check, Cliff alternates between spending nights sleeping at work and maintaining his investigation throughout the night, and leaving work on time and going off to enjoy dinner or a concert.
Overall, The Cuckoo’s Egg provided an enjoyable and highly relatable account of a riveting technical problem-solving scenario. The believability of the troubleshooting was refreshing, but perhaps over the heads of the non-technical, as it provided low-level details even down to Unix commands and switches. The blending of the technical and non-technical challenges experienced by Cliff– his internal struggles, and how he handled them– made an excellent and satisfying story to me as a programmer.