[ UK Smalltalk User Group ]

  Much of today's software is locked inside large, evolving code bases where the original design has gradually been lost. What if we could automatically recover that design, represent it using a language-independent application model, and then allow a modern runtime to render, evolve and maintain the application independently of its original implementation language? This talk presents that vision through  SecureCell , a secure communications appliance developed by XTC Mobile for organizations that require privacy, security and local control. I'll demonstrate how  Graphify  analyzes existing applications to recover their architectural structure, how this information is transformed into the SageTea Canonical Application Model, and how the runtime can automatically generate user interfaces, navigation and application behavior from that model. Rather than treating software as language-specific source code, the emphasis is on recovering and preserving the application's se...

At ESUG 2025, Hera  was introduced as a BDD framework bringing full Gherkin expressiveness to Pharo. Since then, Hera has evolved significantly — both as a framework and as a tool adopted in real-world industrial settings. After a brief introduction to Gherkin for writing given-when-then scenarios, various aspects of Hera will be highlighted. A functional overview will set the scene, followed by a dive into the code to show how Hera maps Gherkin features and scenarios to Smalltalk classes and methods. During a live demo, example Gherkin scenarios for a simple Pharo Spec application will be written to explain the full scenario development cycle. Koen De Hondt has used Smalltalk since 1988, first as a student, then as an academic researcher, and then in industry. He holds a PhD in computer science from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (1998). In the nineties and a few years after the turn of the century, he was one of the driving forces behind the Belgian Smalltalk User Group (BSUG)....

 Coypu and Phausto are two Pharo packages offering respectively a DSL and an API that turn the Pharo IDE into a music and sound design environment. They enable on-the-fly music composition, pattern sequencing, and DSP (Digital Signal Processing) programming. Born as a solo project and free, open source alternative to Symbolic Sound Kyma, they have been subsequently funded by the Pharo Association and Inria. Coypu , deeply inspired by Tidal Cycles, handles musical pattern creation and playback across different audio servers. Phausto  provides an interface for programming synthesizers and audio processing via an embedded Faust compiler, with Bloc widgets that make it easy to display and control synthesis parameters. Phausto can also be used to develop audio plugins thanks to its JUCE and Cmajor exporters. Live performances with both tools have demonstrated that Pharo can handle real-time music and sound design reliably, with solid timing and no audio glitches. Domenico Cipriani ...

Diálogo is a desktop tool that lets children aged 10–17 create their own videogames by combining drawn characters with a set of visual icons — no typing required. The icons compose like cards, activating behaviours in the drawn objects and naturally leading kids through concepts such as categories, rules, recursion, and metaprogramming. In this talk I'll show how Smalltalk's live, image-based environment made it uniquely suited for building Diálogo. I'll give a demo of the app, walk through some implementation metrics, and discuss the pedagogical ideas behind the project — including a free 7-class course I've shared online and workshops I've run open to the community at the Faculty of Exact Sciences (UBA). Agustín Martínez is a developer and researcher at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA), and the creator of Diálogo, a programming environment for children built in Cuis Smalltalk. He presented a paper on Diálogo at the Onward! track of OOPSLA, and has given publ...

Smalltalk environments have long been pioneers in developer productivity. With the VAST Platform AI Assistant, Instantiations is extending that tradition by integrating Large Language Models (LLMs) directly into the VAST platform. This new tool is designed to bring AI capabilities directly into your daily workflow. In this session, Johan, Kris, and Mariano will share a user experience report and a live demonstration of the assistant’s current capabilities, powered by Google’s Gemini. You’ll see how it goes beyond simple chat by directly interacting with the live VAST image through the LLM’s “tools” capabilities. This allows investigating source code as it responds to your questions. These examples will demonstrate how the VAST Platform AI Assistant leverages the live nature of Smalltalk to act as a true pair programmer. We’ll also look ahead at our enterprise-focused roadmap, including support for local models to ensure privacy and security, integration with additional LLM providers, a...

Introducing VEO: A Live Visual Smalltalk that reimagines what a Smalltalk programming environment can be. VEO enables direct visual manipulation of any object and the creation of windowless visual interfaces. It is built around four core principles: all objects are visual; a single infinite zoomable and pannable canvas serves as the workspace; code can be written "in the air" anywhere in that space to send, evaluate and animate messages and live expressions; and live expressions can freely combine symbols, literals and live object references. Adrian Soma began his professional programming career in 1987, with a longstanding focus on the fundamental challenges of programming itself — particularly user interface design and interaction. He first encountered Smalltalk in 1996 and has worked with it ever since. An early project that would prove formative was an interactive chess course application, for which he built a custom graphical object system from scratch. That system becam...