Russell Doolittle is a biocomputing pioneer who was among the first to use computers in the 1960s to compare sequences. He contributed to the discovery of unforeseen sequence similarities, such as the relationship between v-src and v-mos. Doolittle's reflection demonstrates the enormous advances made in bioinformatics, soft- and hardware, and the concurrent explosion in data storage and acceleration of communication. Today's advanced technology was not available at the beginning of Doolittle's career, when no databases existed, and researchers knew by heart most of the sequences which had been published.