This retrospective essay summarizes 50 years experience of a first-generation programmer in Japan focusing on his thoughts on software process issues. It started from strong concern of the structure of program execution processes inside computer hardware, then went out of digital box to think about software development and maintenance processes, namely how to deal with issues between people and software. Finally his main concern turned to the social issues of software evolution processes in the Internet society. The concept of "immaterial labor" seems to be important to think about today's process issues outside of digital boxes.