The computing technology changed dramatically in the past 50 years and in this podcast I talk to people who worked in the field during that time and experienced all these dramatic changes.
Alex Wolfson - from systems programmer, to finance and Lucent.
Alex Wolfson first got interested in programming in an electronic music class, where the teacher explained how computers worked. Alex said that's when he "got it!". His first job was a systems programmer, which was what today would be called a combination of DevOps and SRE. He moved on to work at a number of banks in NYC and Boston.
In the nineties he worked at a startup where he was the first person to get email working on a portable device. Sadly, the startup did not go anywhere. As Alex said it's "not what you got, it's what you sell!". He also spent some time at Lucent and as a consultant for NJ government projects.
He retired in 2026.
If you have any questions or suggestions please email the host: richieb@gmail.com
13 Sept 2026
Robert Konigsberg - from pharma industry in NJ to Uber-TL at Google
Robert started his career in New Jersey working in pharmaceutical industry. He expected to go to work at IBM, after some internships there, but at the time of his graduation IBM was not in the greatest shape.
Eventually, Robert moved to LA and on friend's advice applied to Google and was hired. Initially he worked at Google in California, but later moved back to Google New York.
He recently retired from Google, but still develops software for fun. Check out his Github page:
https://github.com/kberg?tab=repositories (https://github.com/kberg?tab=repositories)
If you have any questions or suggestions please email the host: richieb@gmail.com
27 Jul 2026
Kevin Tyson - from supporting medical research to adventures on Wall Street.
Kevin started his career as a programmer at Rockefeller University, supporting medical research. He worked for the doctors that created the methadone treatment for heroine addicts.
He then moved to Wall Street, working on financial applications first, and the on transactional infrastructure software for many banks around the world. As result he became an accidental inside witness reaction t world events in large institutions.
Today he "retired" to New Hampshire where he is using his technical skills to make local politics better.
Checkout his substack: https://kptyson.substack.com/ (https://kptyson.substack.com/)
If you have any questions or suggestions please email the host: richieb@gmail.com (mailto:richieb@gmail.com)
26 Jun 2026
Adam Liss - from electrical engineer to software engineer; adventures on the hardware/software boundary,
One story summarizes Adam's career - when he was asked in an intro to engineering class "Why do you want to be an electrical engineer?", he replied "Because it's fun!".
While he started as an electrical engineer, he quickly moved into programing of the devices he worked on. As a requirement for a job he read the classic "C Language" book over a weekend to learn C.
Eventually he landed at Google, where - among other things - he build testing harnesses for Android devices.
If you have any questions or suggestions please email the host: richieb@gmail.com
25 May 2026
Steven Fortune - researcher at IBM and Bell Labs. and then software engineer at Google.
Steven Fortune began programming while still in High School - in FORTRAN on punch cards. One of his ambitious projects was a program to play chess (in batch mode!). After obtaining his Ph.D., he went to work at IBM Research Labs in Yorktown Heights. Later, he moved on to Bell Labs research, where he worked in the group that included the creators of UNIX. While working on graph algorithms he developed what is now called Fortune's algorithm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune%27s_algorithm). After a long career at Bell Labs, Steve was hired at Google where he spent his time working on algorithms to improve search results. He retired from Google in 2022.
If you have any questions or suggestions please email the host: richieb@gmail.com
24 Apr 2026
Episode 8: "Computing... there I was" - Conversation with David Windmueller
David Windmueller had an unusually varied career. Although he started playing with computers in elementary school, he started his working life as operator of nuclear reactors in the US Navy. Once he became a software engineer he worked at NASA, some startups and eventually landed at Google. Today he teaches computer science and physics to high school students.
If you have any questions or suggestions please email the host: richieb@gmail.com
6 Mar 2026
Episode 7: "Computing ... there I was" - Conversation with John Cordell
John Cordell had an impressive career. As a teenager he worked along engineers who designed early micro processors at Datapoint (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datapoint). After a stint in NY finance sector, John landed at Microsoft where he was one of the initial developers of the first Internet Explorer. He is responsible for the IFRAME tag in HTML.
He also worked at several startups, including an early AI one.
1 Feb 2026
Episode 6: "Computing...There I was" - Conversation with Barbara Gilman
Barbara Gilman started her career as a Systems Engineer at IBM in 1962. She first wired control panels on IBM accounting machines, such as the 407 (https://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/407.html), then moved on to programming 1401 computers. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_1401) She first coded in machine language, then used Autocoder and others, including Assembly language on the IBM 360/370. After leaving IBM, Barbara worked as an independent software developer, working on many small and mid-range systems, from PCs to 1440s to AS400s, for a wide range of companies. She ended her career working for The Coca-Cola Company.
3 Jan 2026
Episode 5: "Computing...There I was" - Conversation with Kitty Munson-Cooper
Kitty started her career as a system programmer at Digital Equipment Corp (DEC), working on the MUMPS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUMPS) system, then worked at number of financial institutions and eventually ran her own web design business (see https://www.openskywebdesign.com). (https://www.openskywebdesign.com/index.html)
While doing all that she was also a world class bridge (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_bridge) player and genealogist.
You can visit her web site: http://kittycooper.com/ (http://kittycooper.com/)
1 Dec 2025
Episode 4: "Computing...There I was" - Conversation with Marc Cohen
Marc Cohen is a software engineer who worked for many years at Google, Bell Labs and Lucent. He left Google in 2024 and now is a part time teacher in London - teaching Python and AI.
Marc writes a regular blog, which you can fine here: https://mco.dev/ (https://mco.dev/).
For future software engineers Marc gave a talk on how to handle a technical interview, as he was an interviewer at Google. Check it out: Tech Interviews: What to Expect Tips and Tricks (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbBV8LMAoWY)
17 Nov 2025
Episode 3: "Computing... There I was!" - Conversation with David Lampell
As mentioned in the episode, David learned to program as a teenager on a Olivetti programable calculator. Take a look at this page to see what it looked like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programma_101 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programma_101)
14 Oct 2025
Episode 2: "Computing... There I was!" - Conversation with Eric Mintz.
This is the first episode of "Computing... There I was". It's a conversation Eric Mintz, a software engineer recently retired from Google.
Turns out Eric made a small mistake, the language he first programmed in was called CORC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CORC) - Cornell Computing Language.
For those that would like see what keypunch looked and sounded like check out this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FFZya-Ai_Q).
Finally, any questions or suggestions pleas email me at richieb@gmail.com (mailto:richieb@gmail.com) with subject "Computing... There I Was".
12 Oct 2025
Episode 1: "Computing...There I was!" - Introduction to the podcast
This is a short introduction to the podcast by your host. You can always write me at richieb@gmail.com. Please include "Computing...There I was" in the subject line.
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