Hugh Barnard
nifis.uk and hughbarnard.org
I studied chemistry at Imperial College London and spent a year in a commercial drugs research laboratory. There were very few computer science degrees in the late 1960s and early 1970s, so I went immediately from chemistry to computer support and meanwhile taught myself COBOL from a teach yourself book.
After working for Cii Honeywell Bull in France, I was employed as an ‘expert en informatique’ for the European Commission and Parliament on a couple of big projects including Ovide (telematics for the European Parliament) and CELEX (now EUR-Lex, the main legal database) for over a decade. I came back to the UK and worked as a freelancer in London, BBC, Lovefilm and others, and then worked in the City until my ‘official’ retirement. During this time I finished a computing MSc at the Open University. More recently, I finished a philosophy BA at Birkbeck, a retirement project, mainly political philosophy and logic.
My main work now is with Raspberry Pi computers, microcontrollers and Linux.