
Kateryna Yushchenko - known
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kateryna_Yushchenko_(scientist)
======
billfruit
Another Soviet technology in software development, sounds very interesting but
hard to find information about it: It is named R-Technology a visual
programming system said to be still used for critical software in the Russian
Space Program:

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1045926X0...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1045926X05800163)

"The essence of R-technology is the use of weighted, oriented graphs to
express control logic and to enforce good programming style. Unlike other
developments in visual programming, R-technology can accommodate many
programming languages and has been used for numerous development projects.
Despite the fact that it has been extensively documented in the Soviet
literature, it is practically unknown in the United States."

~~~
ACE_Recliner
Re: Soviet visual programming environments, I usually hear DRAKON brought up
in that context (as far as what's usually cited in real world use for Buran
etc.)

I wonder if "R-technology" is either another term for DRAKON or a distinctly
different system. Given how underdocumented Soviet high technology (esp around
computing and related fields) is in English sources, either can be considered
a real possibility.

~~~
vasili111
Its is complitly different. I know DRAKON and it is very different what I see
in the article. Also DRAKON is very different from other visual diagraming
systems. DRAKON is open but system that is actually used in space programming
(if i remember correctly is called Grafit-Floks,
[https://books.google.com/books?id=0g9kDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA198&lpg=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=0g9kDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA198&lpg=PA198&dq=Grafit-
Floks&source=bl&ots=F42sHt0oS2&sig=ACfU3U1Qpw7gnRGP760novl0x2OwcsXMvQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiYtp-
rwKzoAhWEiOAKHbBuCdEQ6AEwC3oECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=Grafit-Floks&f=false)) is not
open and as far as I know is not in market. If you are interested in DRAKON
there is a forum.drakon.su which has english section and on that forum is made
by inventor of DRAKON and he participated in discussion. DRAKON has also
wikipedia page.

~~~
phillc73
HN discussion from 2016 about DRAKON:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12638032](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12638032)

------
mxcrossb
Interesting. That page, and the page on the address programming language, both
could use a lot more detail and significant editing. Hopefully more people who
speak Russian can contribute to these articles.

~~~
mrlambchop
Hear hear. I've explored the old USSR via youtubers like bald and bankrupt and
various urban explorer channels (and of course, the amazing HBO/Sky show,
chernobyl) but I would love something as digestible based on older computing
systems from Russia and beyond. Just yesterday, an urban exploration channel
found a bunch of abandoned computers in a bunker that I could not find a
single reference to on the internet (and that looked fairly intact).

~~~
musha68k
Hey there, those channels you like sound awfully interesting to me as well.
Would you mind sharing where you saw this bunker exploration video exactly?
Thank you :)

~~~
Nextgrid
For Soviet-era bunkers and similar urbex I suggest you have a look at Shiey
([https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpXwMqnXfJzazKS5fJ8nrVw/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpXwMqnXfJzazKS5fJ8nrVw/videos))
as well as Urbex Polska's videos on "Sobieskiego 100"
([https://www.youtube.com/user/NaszaRzeczywistosc/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/NaszaRzeczywistosc/videos)).

------
tvalentyn
There is a good book covering the development of computing in Kyiv in those
days:

intro:
[http://www.icfcst.kiev.ua/MUSEUM/DIFFERENT/StoreEternally.ht...](http://www.icfcst.kiev.ua/MUSEUM/DIFFERENT/StoreEternally.html)
pdf:
[http://www.icfcst.kiev.ua/MUSEUM/TXT/MalinovskiyBN_StoreEter...](http://www.icfcst.kiev.ua/MUSEUM/TXT/MalinovskiyBN_StoreEternally_rus.pdf)

Some more about Kateryna Yushchenko on the Museum's website:
[http://www.icfcst.kiev.ua/MUSEUM/Ushchenko-
memoirs.html](http://www.icfcst.kiev.ua/MUSEUM/Ushchenko-memoirs.html)

See also: [http://www.icfcst.kiev.ua/MUSEUM/museum-
map.html](http://www.icfcst.kiev.ua/MUSEUM/museum-map.html)

------
nivertech
It seems that this APL (Address Programming Language) notation is kind of a
high-level microcode, similar to one used in Intel x86 CPUs, assuming that not
only RAM words, but every register and I/O port are also directly addressable.

Of-course microcode is executable, but Address notation was manually
translated into each specific CPU architecture.

Since every operation defined as a set, it seems it supported expressing SIMD-
style vectorized computations.

------
zerr
Can anyone find any snippet of the above mentioned language?

~~~
ainar-g
There are a couple of articles in Russian on Habr[1][2]. At a glance, it seems
like the language was closer to a form of mathematical notation than it was to
what we now consider a programming language.

[1] [https://habr.com/ru/company/ua-
hosting/blog/387837/](https://habr.com/ru/company/ua-hosting/blog/387837/)

[2] [https://habr.com/ru/company/ua-
hosting/blog/274019/](https://habr.com/ru/company/ua-hosting/blog/274019/)

~~~
keymone
[https://habrastorage.org/r/w780/files/154/629/59f/15462959ff...](https://habrastorage.org/r/w780/files/154/629/59f/15462959ff3d484392601db510c34360.jpg)

Photo of programmers from 1956. Twelve women, zero men.

~~~
myth_drannon
My father worked in one of these Central Calculation Centers in the 80s.
Almost all programmers were women. Man tended to work more with the hardware
which was considered more "dirty" work since you had to be stuck for hours in
those huge machines trying to find the piece that broke. Too bad we lost all
our Ada lang, linear programming books...

~~~
cosmodisk
If I'm not mistaken this was the case across the board

------
based2
[https://medium.com/a-computer-of-ones-own/kateryna-l-
yushche...](https://medium.com/a-computer-of-ones-own/kateryna-l-yushchenko-
inventor-of-pointers-6f2796fa1798)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/flztwo/til_t...](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/flztwo/til_the_first_highlevel_programming_language/)

-> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plankalk%C3%BCl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plankalk%C3%BCl)

