My grandmother is a programmer
I am a third-generation programmer: my grandmother was the first programmer in the family, then my mother, and now I continued the tradition. I asked my grandmother to tell what her career looked like, which began more than half a century ago.
According to the reference book for applicants, which described the existing universities, faculties and specialties, the grandmother chose the Faculty of Mathematics from Kiev Shevchenko National University . School grandmother graduated with a silver medal, which in those days simplified the procedure for admission to the oral interview.
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The faculty of cybernetics was opened only ten years later, but for now the mechmat prepared specialists in mathematics and theoretical mechanics. Upon admission, there was no separation by future specializations - the first two courses were taught all together, and the third was divided by specialties. Grandma's 1959 graduation was the first in which the specialization “computational mathematics” appeared. As part of this specialization, theoretical courses were read, completely new for that time: programming, analog machines, digital machines, computational methods (mainly methods for solving differential equations and linear algebra problems) ... Not only students attended the lecture, but also Computing staff. the center of the Academy of Sciences - other sources of new knowledge often did not exist.
Diploma entry with a list of items
With practice it was more difficult. Computers - then “electronic computers” - were piece goods that the university could not afford. Therefore, during the school year, they recited theoretical material, and in the summer, students went to practice where the computers were. After the third course my grandmother had practice at the Kiev SECM . The students were not allowed to see the real tasks, and I suspect that the MESM staff would not have allowed the students to the machine itself: the practice began with the fact that some compassionate student felt sorry for the dusty mechanism and carefully wiped off a thick layer of dust, after which The contacts of all the wiped lamps were lost, and the car had to be reconfigured anew. Were engaged in practical educational tasks, including game programming. A student chose a game, for example, tic-tac-toe, he studied popular magazines that described game algorithms, and coded them. After that, the program could be run on a computer and get its output to check how it worked.
After my fourth year of study for pre-diploma practice, my grandmother went to Moscow to work at Moscow State University on the Strela machine. The tasks were already more serious, but still learning, mostly linear algebra.
Programming languages ​​as such did not exist yet - around this time Algol and FORTRAN had just appeared in the West. All scientific Kiev was going to listen to reports about Algol-60 V.M. Glushkov , director of the CC of the Ukrainian SSR Academy of Sciences, based on his trip to the USA. But before the introduction of programming languages, we were still far away. All machines of that time worked on machine codes - each on its own system.
We have, besides doctors and candidates, there are people who work!
Feofan Stepanovich, deputy. dir on households parts
After university, my grandmother worked at the Computing Center of the Ukrainian SSR Academy of Sciences — first as a simple engineer, then as a senior, and finally as a leader. Altogether, there were about 300 people in the EC staff: software engineers, engineering engineers, specialists in analog machines (the main ones were still digital) and testers who checked the results of the work of programs on rinmetals (German electromechanical counting machines).
What did the staff of the CC, not involved in the development of new models of computers, including the grandmother? In our time, this would be called outsourcing - EC concluded contracts with organizations that needed numerical solutions to some problems, representatives of organizations formalized the tasks, and employees - solved and coded. For example, one of the tasks of the department was the calculation of the optimal mode for Bessemer converters . Grandmother solved the problems of structural mechanics.
From computers to the EC were first "Kiev" , then - three-address BESM . Machine codes, punched cards (and before them - punched tapes, which were made of illuminated films) - and a lot of stories that you can’t hear now. About people who thoughtfully or nerves shuffled a deck of unsigned punched cards. About how to the computer guided tours of people far from programming, and explained to them the principle of the machine. One of them asked the same question several times; after another explanation, when the guide's nerves were already at the limit, he was indignant "Well, what do you explain to me, I understand a long time ago, but here it is" - a gesture in the direction of a peacefully rustling computer - "how do you understand it?". The fact that the computer time was never enough, so mathematicians often worked at night - and the punch was closed at the end of the working day. At night, we had to edit punch cards with the code manually — cut through the missing holes and seal the extra pieces of cardboard left over from automatic punching. The operators of the hand-made computer punch cards did not approve - the slits were still nothing, but the glued pieces could fall off inside the input device and disable it. However, usually the victory remained behind the bright side of power - mathematicians.
1965 - 1988. Zonal Research Institute for Experimental Design (ZNIIEP)
In 1965, my grandmother moved to ZNIIEP to the position of chief specialist, later chief engineer of design. This organization was already less involved in outsourcing, and basically solved its own tasks - designed residential and public buildings, programmed design calculation methods and solved design automation tasks (created specialized drawing tools like AutoCAD).
Oh, the eternal problem of those times is machine time! Partly it was rented at the EC, partly - they used their own car, the “Nairi” . The car was of Armenian origin, and allowed to enter programs not only in codes, but also in the internal programming language - Cyrillic, but with a corresponding accent. It is because of this emphasis that the following story happened. Written and debugged programs for calculating the elements were collected together and published in the form of printed brochures that were used to transfer programs to other machines or for further work. We approached the publication of brochures responsibly, and carefully read them before publication. Once a collection of programs for “Nairi” fell into the hands of a proofreader, who did not really imagine her programming language, but was very sick for the purity of the Russian language in the ranks of programmers. Result? The “read” programs, ideally correct from a grammatical point of view, have completely ceased to work in the language “Nairi”.
The work of the programmer at ZNIIEP implied frequent business trips — to the cities of the USSR to customer organizations, to clarify the formulation of the problem, and to other countries — to exchange experience. Of course, the majority were released only in the countries of the socialist camp, communication with programmers in capitalist countries took place exclusively at the leadership level, but trips to Bulgaria and guests from Hungary and Czechoslovakia are also not bad.
By the way, it’s hard to say how exotic the programmer’s work was to people uninitiated at that time — grandmother’s husband and all their friends and acquaintances were from the same or related professions.
There was no special relationship with female programmers - there were many of them both at the university and at work, and this did not surprise anyone. Apparently, the outrageous stereotype about guinea pigs definitely belongs to a later period.
1954-1959. Higher education
According to the reference book for applicants, which described the existing universities, faculties and specialties, the grandmother chose the Faculty of Mathematics from Kiev Shevchenko National University . School grandmother graduated with a silver medal, which in those days simplified the procedure for admission to the oral interview.
')
The faculty of cybernetics was opened only ten years later, but for now the mechmat prepared specialists in mathematics and theoretical mechanics. Upon admission, there was no separation by future specializations - the first two courses were taught all together, and the third was divided by specialties. Grandma's 1959 graduation was the first in which the specialization “computational mathematics” appeared. As part of this specialization, theoretical courses were read, completely new for that time: programming, analog machines, digital machines, computational methods (mainly methods for solving differential equations and linear algebra problems) ... Not only students attended the lecture, but also Computing staff. the center of the Academy of Sciences - other sources of new knowledge often did not exist.
Diploma entry with a list of items
With practice it was more difficult. Computers - then “electronic computers” - were piece goods that the university could not afford. Therefore, during the school year, they recited theoretical material, and in the summer, students went to practice where the computers were. After the third course my grandmother had practice at the Kiev SECM . The students were not allowed to see the real tasks, and I suspect that the MESM staff would not have allowed the students to the machine itself: the practice began with the fact that some compassionate student felt sorry for the dusty mechanism and carefully wiped off a thick layer of dust, after which The contacts of all the wiped lamps were lost, and the car had to be reconfigured anew. Were engaged in practical educational tasks, including game programming. A student chose a game, for example, tic-tac-toe, he studied popular magazines that described game algorithms, and coded them. After that, the program could be run on a computer and get its output to check how it worked.
After my fourth year of study for pre-diploma practice, my grandmother went to Moscow to work at Moscow State University on the Strela machine. The tasks were already more serious, but still learning, mostly linear algebra.
Programming languages ​​as such did not exist yet - around this time Algol and FORTRAN had just appeared in the West. All scientific Kiev was going to listen to reports about Algol-60 V.M. Glushkov , director of the CC of the Ukrainian SSR Academy of Sciences, based on his trip to the USA. But before the introduction of programming languages, we were still far away. All machines of that time worked on machine codes - each on its own system.
1959 - 1965. Computing Center of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR
We have, besides doctors and candidates, there are people who work!
Feofan Stepanovich, deputy. dir on households parts
After university, my grandmother worked at the Computing Center of the Ukrainian SSR Academy of Sciences — first as a simple engineer, then as a senior, and finally as a leader. Altogether, there were about 300 people in the EC staff: software engineers, engineering engineers, specialists in analog machines (the main ones were still digital) and testers who checked the results of the work of programs on rinmetals (German electromechanical counting machines).
What did the staff of the CC, not involved in the development of new models of computers, including the grandmother? In our time, this would be called outsourcing - EC concluded contracts with organizations that needed numerical solutions to some problems, representatives of organizations formalized the tasks, and employees - solved and coded. For example, one of the tasks of the department was the calculation of the optimal mode for Bessemer converters . Grandmother solved the problems of structural mechanics.
From computers to the EC were first "Kiev" , then - three-address BESM . Machine codes, punched cards (and before them - punched tapes, which were made of illuminated films) - and a lot of stories that you can’t hear now. About people who thoughtfully or nerves shuffled a deck of unsigned punched cards. About how to the computer guided tours of people far from programming, and explained to them the principle of the machine. One of them asked the same question several times; after another explanation, when the guide's nerves were already at the limit, he was indignant "Well, what do you explain to me, I understand a long time ago, but here it is" - a gesture in the direction of a peacefully rustling computer - "how do you understand it?". The fact that the computer time was never enough, so mathematicians often worked at night - and the punch was closed at the end of the working day. At night, we had to edit punch cards with the code manually — cut through the missing holes and seal the extra pieces of cardboard left over from automatic punching. The operators of the hand-made computer punch cards did not approve - the slits were still nothing, but the glued pieces could fall off inside the input device and disable it. However, usually the victory remained behind the bright side of power - mathematicians.
1965 - 1988. Zonal Research Institute for Experimental Design (ZNIIEP)
1988 - 1996. Research Institute for Theory of Architecture and Urban Planning (NIITAG)
In 1965, my grandmother moved to ZNIIEP to the position of chief specialist, later chief engineer of design. This organization was already less involved in outsourcing, and basically solved its own tasks - designed residential and public buildings, programmed design calculation methods and solved design automation tasks (created specialized drawing tools like AutoCAD).
Oh, the eternal problem of those times is machine time! Partly it was rented at the EC, partly - they used their own car, the “Nairi” . The car was of Armenian origin, and allowed to enter programs not only in codes, but also in the internal programming language - Cyrillic, but with a corresponding accent. It is because of this emphasis that the following story happened. Written and debugged programs for calculating the elements were collected together and published in the form of printed brochures that were used to transfer programs to other machines or for further work. We approached the publication of brochures responsibly, and carefully read them before publication. Once a collection of programs for “Nairi” fell into the hands of a proofreader, who did not really imagine her programming language, but was very sick for the purity of the Russian language in the ranks of programmers. Result? The “read” programs, ideally correct from a grammatical point of view, have completely ceased to work in the language “Nairi”.
The work of the programmer at ZNIIEP implied frequent business trips — to the cities of the USSR to customer organizations, to clarify the formulation of the problem, and to other countries — to exchange experience. Of course, the majority were released only in the countries of the socialist camp, communication with programmers in capitalist countries took place exclusively at the leadership level, but trips to Bulgaria and guests from Hungary and Czechoslovakia are also not bad.
By the way, it’s hard to say how exotic the programmer’s work was to people uninitiated at that time — grandmother’s husband and all their friends and acquaintances were from the same or related professions.
There was no special relationship with female programmers - there were many of them both at the university and at work, and this did not surprise anyone. Apparently, the outrageous stereotype about guinea pigs definitely belongs to a later period.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/127592/
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