Re: F22 Raptor in slashdot.org

[aek@vib.usr.pu.ru (Alexander Kopilovitch)]

Wojtek Narczynski) wrote:
> ... I guess many people, definitely including
> me, would love to hear what has been used to create software for
> russian space programmes and aircrafts. Little information is
> publically available about this.

Well, although I certainly don't know anything concrete about Soviet/Russian
space programmes (thanks God -;) and their software, nevertheless with
indirect information from many different sources I'm sure that most of the
software (especially before 1970) was created using assemblers, and probably 
often quite rudimentary assemblers... it is even quite possible that some part
of the software was created directly in machine code, that is, without any
assembler.
  Note that the Soviet military and space computers those times were
incompatible with Western computers, and there were very few programmers
skilled enough for creating good compilers (decade of calling cybernetics
"a prostitute for imperialism" had significant consequences). At the same time
there were plenty of good mathematicians. So, perhaps, good mathematics and
near-perfect algorithms compensated for hardships and inefficiency of assembly
(and octal code) programming and debugging. 



Alexander Kopilovitch                      aek@vib.usr.pu.ru
Saint-Petersburg
Russia