The APL 93 Russian Fund

Transcribed from the printed issue; not yet reviewed. Read it in the PDF of the issue, page 7

I am happy to say that the APL 93 Russian Fund was a success. The Russian Fund paid transportation, Visa fees, conference registration, living expenses and arranged accommodation for seven Russians. Two additional Russians attending APL 93 received logistical support (and accommodation arrangement, in one case) from the Russian Fund, although they paid other expenses themselves. Andrei Kondrashev (Chairman of APL 92) has been living & working in Chicago and needed no help from the Russian Fund. Thus, there were a total of ten Russian delegates at APL 93.

The APL 93 Russian Fund total revenues were Cdn$10,480.20 and total expenses were Cdn$9,615.37. The APL 93 Russian Fund was closed-out by sending a cheque for US$643.48 to the APL 94 Russian Fund.

Three key elements to the financial success of the Fund were:

• the fact that Russians could buy round-trip tickets to Montreal for under US$500 (although these prices have been rising rapidly);
• the willingness of Toronto APLers to open their homes to Russian guests at no financial cost;
• the generosity of those who contributed to the Fund.

Special thanks go to the two largest contributors:

• The British APL Association, which contributed about US$2,250.
• Security APL of Chicago, which contributed US$1,000.

The nine delegates who came to APL 93 from Russia were Alexander Skomorokhov, Dmitri Lukyanov, Pavel Luksha, Oleg Luksha, Alexei Skurikhin, Nikolai Puntikov, Aibarsha Mukanova, Alexei Kononov and Andrei Pakhomov. A brief character sketch of each of these people is the best way to convey the true success of the APL 93 Russian Fund.

Alexander Skomorokhov (Sasha). Dr. Skomorokhov is the president of SovAPL. At APL 93 he presented the paper "Adaptive Learning Networks in APL2". "APL" in Russian is an abbreviation for "Atomic Underwater Submarine". Due to his background in nuclear energy, Dr. Skomorokhov casually bought a book with "APL" in the title at a second-hand bookstore in 1979. It was the textbook by Gilman & Rose. He began looking at the book at midnight one evening, and became so engrossed that he didn't stop reading until 8am next morning. APL was not implemented in Russian until 5 years later (by Andrei Kondrashev).

Dr. Skomorokhov used APL as a formal notation for algorithms, and still uses it for this purpose. He has written many types of software for nuclear power diagnostics in APL, including expert systems, time-series analysis, databases, statistics, etc. He learned of APL2 from Erkki Juvonen, and this discovery was almost as electrifying for him as his initial contact with APL. Teaching APL2 to children in now a favourite hobby of his.

Sasha is very gregarious and he counts many people in the APL community as personal friends. He relished the opportunity at APL 93 to meet these people and make new friends. He appreciated seeing the latest version of APL2 on OS/2. He especially liked the presentation "Undocumented Features of APL" by Tima Laurmaa.

Dmitri Lukyanov. Dmitri is Dr. Skomorokhov's colleague at the nuclear power plant in Obninsk, Russia (near Moscow). Like Sasha, he found Gilman & Rose to be an exciting book, and he enjoyed the problems even without the benefit of a computer. When APL became available on computer he wrote assembler programs to take data from diagnostic sensors and feed that data to APL software. With the advent of a market economy he has taken the initiative to use APL to write a menu system for a restaurant/casino part-time, in addition to his regular work.

At APL 93 Dmitri was particularly interested in learning more about the British ASL (APL Statistics Library). He was very impressed by the Windowing APL systems he saw at the exhibits. And he thought Robert Bernecky's tutorial on Parallel Computing was'great. He hopes the Russian Fund will be unnecessary in a few years.

Pavel Luksha. Pavel is the 16-year-old son of long-time SovAPL member Oleg Luksha. At APL 93 he presented a paper on "Learning Modern Algebra" in which he demonstrated his attempts to solve the Problem of Irreducible Polynomials using APL. At the conference he particularly enjoyed the tutorials by Dr. McIntyre (Introduction to J) and Robert Bernecky (Parallel Computing) as well as the "Undocumented Features of APL" paper.

Oleg Luksha. Oleg is a lecturer at the Obninsk Study and Conference Centre for Nuclear Energy. He has been using APL since 1977 for teaching (to teach algorithms) and for scientific investigation (simulation of the process of dissolution of nuclear fuel). He has been interested in the ASL and was especially glad to meet Alan Sykes. But the high point of APL 93 for him was watching his son present a paper.

Alexei Skurikhin. Alexei presented the APL 93 paper "Identification of Parallelism in Neural Networks by Simulations in the Language J" with his University of Nebraska colleague Alvin Surkan. Alexei has no knowledge-of or interest-in APL. He only has experience in J. His main interest is neural networks, and he uses whatever tools he finds that can further his work. He uses J for prototyping small programs and uses C for large programs where speed of execution is more important. Alexei particularly liked Dr. McIntyre's "Introduction to J" tutorial, Robert Bernecky's "Parallel Computing" tutorial and Chris Lee's "Wicked Problems in APL" tutorial. He also liked the paper "Practical Statistical Computing using J" and he greatly enjoyed all the APL 93 social events.

Nikolai Puntikov. Nikolai was one of the key organizers of APL 92 and has continued to expand his expertise by organizing other, larger conferences in St. Petersburg (unrelated to APL). Nikolai took responsibility for co-ordinating the APL 93 Russian Fund in Russia (helping with visas, plane fares, money distribution and communications). Nikolai's expertise in linguistics was useful when Andrei Kondrashev needed to design a symbol table, keyboard and screen handler for the Russian implementation of APL. Nikolai still works at a language institute, but only uses APL for personal needs. He believes APL is a way of thinking, and he likes people who think in the APL way. He arrived at the final picnic after I left (I'm told he was on a book-buying spree) so I did not get his impressions of the conference.

Aibarsha Mukanova. Aibarsha was the only female in the group — and the only non-Russian. She lives and works in the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan, in Alma-Ata. She met Andrei Kondrashev in 1986 when she was doing her PhD thesis in Moscow. Currently she uses APL for differential equations used in modelling turbulent currents in the atmosphere. Studying the movement of particles over the Aral Sea is useful for forecasting dust and salt storms.

She said it was a great pleasure to learn of other scientists' work. She was very interested in Dr. Stephen Jaffe's plenary session on modelling petroleum chemistry. She thought Eric Iverson's tutorial "Windows GUI Programming in ISIAPL" was very good. Eric gave her an APL Windows system for her work, which gives Iverson Software a toehold in Kazakhstan! Moreover, Ray Polivka has induced her to write up her work for Quote Quad.

Alexei Kononov. Alexei received no money from the Russian Fund, but we did help him to find free accommodation — and we helped with logistics. I believe he was sponsored by the Ministry of Atomic Energy. He teaches algorithms by means of APL. He uses APL*PLUS. He won an APL*PLUS II system from Manugistics at APL 92, but he hasn't got the hardware to use it. At APL 93 he took a particular interest in "AGSS: A Graphical Statistical System", APLIWIN, "Wicked Problems in APL" and the (nearly) free run-time system of Manugistics. He thought David Eastwood's presentation on "Structured Functions with Operators" had some good ideas for producing more readable APL code for large systems. Alexei got Ken Iverson to autograph an APL 93 Conference Program.

Andrei Pakhomov. The APL 93 Russian Fund assisted Andrei with the logistics of registration, transportation and accommodation — but these were paid for in full by the company Andrei works for: EXIMA. Andrei had been a PASCAL programmer before meeting Andrei Kondrashev in 1986. Liking APL, he rewrote all his programs in the new language. With Boris Makeev, he developed an APL expert system for economic forecasting.

Then Andrei became more "practical" (he says), and started doing programming with the rapidly-growing new importing company EXIMA. Every aspect of EXIMA business operations is being programmed by Andrei in APL — tailoring the systems to the inflation, taxes and other idiosyncracies of the emerging Russian business environment. Andrei is held in almost god-like esteem by his company, which did about US$25 million worth of business last year (that's a lot of Roubles!). At APL 93 Andrei became convinced that Dyalog APL is the best tool for creating a user-friendly environment for EXIMA's applications.

If the above character sketches are any indication, the APL 93 Russian Fund was not only a financial success, but a success in advancing APL in the rapidly-changing new world of Russia. I believe that contributions to the APL 93 Russian Fund were an investment which will reap many benefits for the APL community in the future.

Contributions to the APL 94 Russian Fund can be sent to: The APL 94 Russian Fund, c/o Madame L. Lemagnen, 174 Boulevard de Charonne, F-75020 Paris, France.