2nd All-Union Conference in Programming

                    (Novosibirsk, February 3-6, 1970)

February 3-6, 1970, at the No vosibirsk Scientific Center of Siberian Branch of
the USSR Academy of Science the 2nd All-Union Conference in Programming (VKP-2)
took place. Interdepartmental Committee on Computer Software attached to the
USSR Council of Ministers' State Committee on Science and Technology (chaired by
Academician A.A. Dorodnitsyn), a conferences' supervisory body, entrusted SBAS
USSR Computing Center with the Conference conduction (Organizing Committee
chaired by head of SBAS USSR CC Programming Department, Doctor of physical and
mathematical sciences A.P. Ershov).

In order to prepare the Conference form and scientific program, the
Interdepartmental Committee appointed a VKP-2 Program Committee under the
chairmanship of head of program automation Department of AS USSR Institute of
Applied Mathematics, Doctor of physical and mathematical sciences M.R. Shura-
Bura.

900 delegates from 277 USSR institutions and 50 guests attended VKP-2. In
addition, 24 foreign scientists from Bulgaria, Hungary, GDR, Holland, Poland,
USA, FRANCE and FRG took part in the Conference.

The Conference work was organized in two plenary sessions and 12 sectional ones,
the latter taking place as two parallel sections. Altogether 4 one-hour plenary
talks, 4 half-an-hour plenary talks, 49 contributed talks, and 12 smaller
reports were presented at the Conference. Two panel subject discussion and a
general discussion at the closing session were provided for.

Vice-chairman of AS USSR Siberian Branch, director of the Computing Center,
Academician G.I. Marchuk, opened the Conference. Greeting those present, he
pointed that the issues of theory of programming and software development are
the key to exploiting of modern computer facilities. Academician Marchuk named
software for automated control systems and introduction of shared computer
access principles to computer organization as the main problems in the field.

In a plenary talk  "Automatic control systems" by Academician V.M. Glushkov, a
state-of-the-art survey was presented, and a methodology of standard industrial
automatic control systems development was proposed. 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 plenary talk "Programming abroad" defined the world level of
programming. As the main points the speaker noted the following: the fact that
national economies of developed countries reached the first level of saturation
with computers; computerization of a great bulk of information resources; rapid
progress in multi-access systems; transformation of computer software and
machine time allocation into a new separate field of marketed commodities; great
and general personnel hardship; introduction of engineering methods into
software development.

The last presented at the first plenary session was a talk by Rector of the
Moscow Institute of Economy and Statistics M.A. Korolev entitled "The aspects of
personnel training and use in programming". The speaker described the presently
established classification of computers and their application, and evaluated the
according need in programming personnel. It was noted that a recently introduced
new specialty "applied mathematics" 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 speaker
emphasized that solution of a very complex problem of personnel training in
programming can be achieved only by vigorous and purposeful combined efforts for
all sorts of personnel training (high school, colleges, universities,
institutes, skill conversion courses, popular lectures, etc.).

The technical program of the conference demonstrated great success in Soviet
programming development. Average presentation standard at VKP-2 was appreciably
higher in comparison with the 1st Conference that had been held in November 1968
in Kiev. 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 at the conference: a monitoring system for automation of
experimental data collection and processing (developed at Joint Institute of
Nuclear Research); an operation system based on dynamic calls to hierarchical
archive (developed at the Moscow University); considerable 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 chaired by Doctor of physical and mathematical
sciences L.N. Korolev.

A great deal of the conference participants' interest was stimulated by three
reports describing the first Soviet general-purpose multi-computer shared-access 
"AIST-0" system developed at the Computing Center of the AS USSR 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 several
more presentations: M.M. Bezhanova's (Novosibirsk) talk on "Tensor" system for
linear algebra problems, where selection of the decision method is made partly
automatically and partly by the dialog with subscriber; a console debugging
system for "Dnepr-2" computer by the UAS Institute of Cybernetics; a talk by
I.R. Akselrod and L.F. Belous (Kharkov) on SYRIUS system for dialog execution
of analytic computations; research on multi-access systems characteristics
evaluation by imitation modeling (L.A. Kalinichenko and V.M. Moskalenko,
Moscow);and a problem of dynamic task priority setting (V.M. Afinogenov,
Moscow).

A perceptible number of presentations addressed the last developments in
software engineering for "Minsk" computer series. Among these are a modular
programming system for "Minsk-22" developed in Tallinn (E.Kh. Tyugu et al), and
two programming systems for economic problems - one of them based on ALGEK
language (developed at the Moscow Institute of Economics and Statistics), and
the other one Cobol-based (developed at the Institute of Mathematics of
Belorussian Academy of Science). Three reports were devoted to recently finished
batch processing operating systems for "Minsk-23" and "Minsk-32" computers.

On the whole, the subject of operating systems was predominant in the conference
program. As is already obvious from the above survey, the main topic was reports
on concrete projects indicative of the fulfillment of a large-scale program on
equipping the 2nd generation computers with operating systems that provide
automatic task processing, archive and device management. Presentation by I.B.
Zadykhailo, S.S. Kamyshin and E.Z. Lubimsky (AS USSR Institute of applied
mathematics) on the subject of operating systems summarized the covered stage of
development in this area.

Among the series of talks on programming languages and compilers worthy of note
are a presentation by research fellows of the Leningrad department of Central
Institute of Economy and Statistics devoted to SIMULA simulation language
implementation, Refal-based programming system evolution (S.A. Romanenko and
V.F. Turchin, IAM AS USSR, and a talk by A.B. Shkut (IM AS BSSR) on optimization
in Algams compilers for "Minsk" computers.

A panel discussion  "How to solve problems using computers?" chaired by the AS
USSR Corresponding member S.S. Lavrov (AS USSR Computing Center) stimulated a
great deal of interest among 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.

Like at the 1st Conference, in Novosibirsk a number of presented talks addressed
applications and other topics contiguous to programming. An invited talk on the
methods of heuristic programming and a survey of particular projects exploiting
these methods was delivered by S.S. Lavrov co-authored by G.M. Adelson-Velsky,
V.A. Arlazarov and M.M. Bongard. A group of authors from All-Union Institute of
Scientific and Technical Information spoke about the conclusion of a large
project on BESM-4 implementation of formulae index builder for the "Chemistry"
field record book. A questionnaire system for economical data processing was
developed at 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 invited talk by Yu.M. Bayakovsky and V.S. Shtarkman (Moscow) covered the
topic of computer graphics - a new direction in programming concerning input and
output of graphic information 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.

Among the talks on the theory of programming one should mention an invited talk
by A.V. Gladky and A.Ya. Dikovsky (Novosibirsk) on 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). New
results in the theory of operator schemata equivalence were reported by V.A.
Tuzov (Leningrad) and V.A. Nepomniashy (Novosibirsk).

The foreign participants of the Conference delivered six talks. John Cocke (IBM
Research Center, USA) spoke about an algorithm for global search of matching
expressions in a program. Fritz Bauer (Higher Technical School, Munich)
communicated his considerations on the ways of programming languages design and
implementation. Doctor Louis Nolan (University of Paris) described a universal
language ATF that he created. Aad vanWijngaarden (Center of Mathematics,
Amsterdam) demonstrated the applicability range of his method of context
dependencies description in languages that was first employed in Algol-68
description. Peter Ingerman (Radio Corporation of America, Research center of
the Data processing department, Camden) spoke about an application of general
taxonomy methods to classification of programming objects and concepts.
Professor John McCarthy (Stanford University, USA) reported some new results in
programming theory that connect program verification problems with predicate
calculus.

At the final plenary session M.R. Shura-Bura summarized the main results
presented at the conference and analyzed the most urgent problems in programming
in his plenary talk entitled "Retro-perspective". 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. At the same time some important up-to-date directions
were poorly presented at the conference. It would be of interest to compare
percentage of the conference presentations' subject matters compared with the
similar figures for 250 international publications in programming in 1969.

Subject matter             % at VKP-2         % in international

                                                                         literature

theory                                         9                                  4             

programming systems                32                                 24

engineering

operating systems                      35                                 24

techniques

data and archive                         13                                 13

processing

language specification                  3                                   5

computer graphics                      3                                  15

personnel, documentation,           5                                  15

management

The Conference did not pass a resolution, but those speaking at a general
discussion at the final plenary session brought forward a number of problems of
great importance for future intensification of research in programming:
development of multi-access systems, computer graphics research deployment,
perfection of software technology and research management, broadening qualified
personnel training, increasing publication output on programming, and
development of other forms of communication between research groups.

 On February 7 an international discussion on the subject of "Programming in
70's" took place. It was timed to the conference and organized by SBAS USSR
Computing Center. Participants of the discussion chaired by Dr. Tursky (the
Polish People Republic) - H.Tihle (GDR), A. vanWijngaarden (Netherlands), A.P.
Ershov, S.S. Lavrov, and M.R. Shura-Bura (USSR), P. Ingerman, J. Cocke, and J.
McCarthy (USA), L. Bolliet, L. Nolin (France), F. Bauer (FRG) - gave to the
conference participants an account of their views on programming development in
the next decade and answered numerous questions.

All technical contributions were published as nine proceedings' editions by the
conference beginning. Plenary sessions' proceedings, discussions and the talks
of foreign participants are to be published as three additional editions of
conference proceedings.

                                    A.P. Ershov (Novosibirsk)