She considered Ann Arbor a big change from her Chicago lifestyle, mentioning her hardships in adapting to life separated for the first time from her twin sister.

[4] Interested in the subject of computing, Goldberg worked as an intern with IBM during the summer of her junior year of college, where she learned how to program unit record machines.

[4] She completed her dissertation, "Computer-Assisted Instruction: The Application of Theorem-proving to Adaptive Response Analysis," while working as a research associate at Stanford University.

[7] After completing her PhD, Goldberg briefly worked as a professor in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, before joining Xerox PARC in 1973 as a research scientist.

This language developed the object-oriented approach of Simula 67 and introduced a programming environment of overlapping windows on graphic display screens.

This new “personal computer,” with its key features including portability, network connection, communication with others, build models, and content sharing capabilities was the objective of Smalltalk at the time.

Adele and her team paired up with Doug Engelbart, the original inventor of the mouse, to see the possibilities of its incorporation to Smalltalk with the goal of better access, avoiding command lines with funny syntax.

She emphasized the vision of a small device, being able to be carried anywhere, that could give out information in quantities approaching that of human sensory systems, where the output had to be higher quality than newspapers.

In 1981, BYTE magazine featured Smalltalk, where she personally helped write and edit an article, with the goal of introducing and normalizing object-oriented programming as a necessity in today's developing and technologically dependent society.

According to Goldberg, Steve Jobs demanded a demonstration of the Smalltalk System, which she at first refused to give him, although her superiors eventually compelled her to comply.

Afterwards, Steve Jobs was shown an early version of Goldberg's Smalltalk (Model 76 at the time), where he immediately incorporated it into Apple's new Computer, the Macintosh.

[16] She continues to pursue her interest in education, formulating computer science courses at community colleges in the United States and abroad.

[20] In 2022, with Dan Ingalls, she was made a Fellow of the CHM for promoting and codeveloping the Smalltalk programming environment and contributions advancing use of computers in education.