Programming Problems

          (An All-Union Conference in Novosibirsk)

February 3-6, 1970, the Computing Center of Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy
of Science held the Second All-Union Conference in Programming. More then 1000
scientists and specialists including guests from Bulgaria, Hungary, GDR,
Holland, Poland, USA, FRANCE and FRG attended it.

The Conference work was organized in two plenary and 12 sectional sessions,
where 65 talks and reports were presented.

In his opening speech G.I. Marchuk, the director of the Computing Center,
pointed that the issues of theory of programming and software development are
the key to exploiting of the modern computer facilities. He named software for
automated control systems and introduction of shared computer access principles
as the main problems in this field.

At the first plenary session three talks were presented.  In his talk 
"Automatic control systems", V.M. Glushkov (Kiev) made a survey and proposed a
methodology of standard industrial automatic control systems development. The
speaker noted that integration of computer science and associated new methods of
organization into the sphere of enterprise management will double the rate of
growth of national economy with the same level of capital investments.

A.P. Ershov, in his talk "Programming abroad", defined the world level of
programming. As the main points, the speaker noted the fact that national
economies of developed countries reached the first level of saturation with
computers, computerization of the great bulk of information resources, rapid
progress in multi-access systems, transformation of computer software and
machine time allocation into new separate field of marketed commodities, etc.

M.A. Korolev (Moscow) made a presentation entitled "The aspects of personnel
training and use in programming". He described the presently established
classification of computers and their application, and evaluated the according
need in programming personnel. The speaker told that "applied mathematics" - a
new specialty introduced in higher educational institutions, is called to become
the main source of new qualified personnel, but in the next few years additional
training will still remain the quickest form of education, especially in
industry.

The technical part of the conference program demonstrated great success in
Soviet programming development. Eight presentations were devoted to the
operating system developed for BESM-6 computer at the USSR Academy of Sciences
Institute of Applied Mathematics. The system provides extensive programming
means based on a general-purpose machine-dependent ALMO language, allows to
control simultaneous execution of several computation processes, has a developed
universal archive of programs and data, and provides individual computer access
via several terminals.

Several more talks devoted to operating systems and software tools for BESM-6
were presented, in particular, on monitoring system for automation of
experimental data collection and processing (developed at Joint Institute of
Nuclear Research), on operation system based on dynamic calls to hierarchical
archive (developed at the Moscow University), on the upgrade of an existing
operating system (carried out at the Institute of Precise Mechanics and Computer
Hardware of the USSR Academy of Science), and others.  Comparative analysis and
discussion of these systems were the main topic of the "Operating systems
problems" discussion.

The conference participants showed interest in reports on the first Soviet
general-purpose multicomputer shared-access  "AIST-0" system developed at the
Computing Center of the Siberian Branch. This experimental system consists of
two M-220 computers controlled by  "Minsk-22" computer and will allow 20
subscribers to carry on a dialog with the system using teletypes and typewriters
as terminals. The initial version of the system will provide an archive, console
debugger and editor, system communication facility, batchmode executive for
background processing, programs for automated system statistics acquisition.

The development and application of multi-access systems was the topic of M.M.
Bezhanova (Novosibirsk) presentation on "Tensor" system for linear algebra
problems, where selection of the decision method is made partly automatically
and partly by the dialog with subscriber; V.I. Konozenko at.al. (Kiev) - on a
console debugging system for "Dnepr-2" computer; L.A. Kalinichenko and V.M.
Moskalenko (Moscow) - on research in multi-access systems characteristics
evaluation by imitation modeling; V.M. Afinogenov (Moscow) - on a problem of
dynamic task priority setting.

A number of presentations addressed the last developments in software
engineering for "Minsk" computer series. Among these are a modular programming
system developed in Tallinn, and two programming systems for economic problems -
one of them is based on Algec language (developed in the Moscow Institute of
Economics and Statistics), and the other is Cobol-based (developed in the
Institute of Mathematics of Belorussian Academy of Science). A report was made
on recently finished batch processing operating systems for "Minsk-23" and
"Minsk-32" computers.

Thus, the subject of operating systems was predominant in the conference
program. The presentation of I.B. Zadykhailo, S.S. Kamyshin and E.Z. Liubimsky
(Moscow) summarized the covered stage of development in this area.

Among the series of talks on programming languages and compilers we would like
to note the presentations devoted to Simula simulation language implementation,
Refal-based programming system development, optimization in Algams compilers for
"Minsk" computers.

The discussion "How to solve problems using computers?" attracted attention of
the conference participants. It was noted that the aggregate efficiency of
computer use in problem solving is defined by the balance of highly
heterogeneous conditions beginning with the level of author's mathematical
expertise and ending with purely administrative aspects of computer
exploitation.

A number of presented talks concerned applications and other topics contiguous
to programming. Thus the presentation of S.S. Lavrov, G.M. Adelson-Velsky, V.A.
Arlazarov and M.M. Bongard (Moscow) addressed the methods of heuristic
programming and particular projects using these methods. The reports were made
about the conclusion of a large VINITI project on BESM-4 implementation of
formulae index builder for "Chemistry" journal, and the creation of a
questionnaire system for economical data processing in the Institute of
Cybernetics of the Estonian Academy of Sciences. Some reports addressed the
issues of information and information search systems, information processing
algorithms for datatapes.

The report of Yu.M. Bayakovsky and V.S. Shtarkman (Moscow) treated computer
graphics - a new direction in programming (input and output of graphic
information if performed by special printing, drawing or screen devices).
Unfortunately, there were only a few technical reports on computer graphics and
they concerned only the use of printing devices.

In theory of programming one should mention the talk presented by A.V. Gladky
and A.Ya. Dikovsky (Novosibirsk) on the subject of new results in general theory
of formal grammars and languages. Its main focus was on application of the
theory to programming languages. The theory of grammars and its application to
program analysis was also the subject of the talks delivered by V.M. Red'ko
(Kiev), A.L. Fuksman (Rostov), M.G. Gonza and M.N. Marichuk (Kishinev). V.A.
Tuzov (Leningrad) and V.A. Nepomniashy (Novosibirsk) reported new results in the
theory of operator schemata equivalence.

The foreign participants also delivered a number of presentations. J.Cocke (USA)
spoke about an algorithm for global search of matching expressions in a program.
F. Bauer (FRG) communicated his considerations on the ways of programming
languages design and implementation. L. Nolan (France) spoke about the ATF
universal language he created. A. vanWijngaarden (Holland) demonstrated the
applicability range of his method of context dependencies description in
languages that was first employed in Algol-68 description. P. Ingerman (USA)
spoke about an application of general taxonomy methods to classification of
programming objects and concepts. J.McCarthy (USA) reported some new data in
programming theory that connect program verification problems with predicate
calculus.

At the final plenary session M.R. Shura-Bura (Moscow) summarized the main
results presented at the conference and analyzed the most important problems in
programming. The speaker noted the growing professional and scientific level of
presentations, substantial results in the development of operating systems and
programming systems, urgency of multi-access systems problems.

In common discussion held during this session a number of problems were brought
forward as being of great importance for future intensification of research in
programming including development of multi-access systems, computer graphics
research deployment, development of software technology and research management.

Doctor of Physical and Mathematical sciences                   A.P. Ershov