[ UK Smalltalk User Group ]

For our August presentation, Newspeak 's creator Gilad Bracha will share some recent developments in Newspeak. All Newspeak applications now support interactive online collaboration out of the box. No programming is required to enable this. We utilize the Croquet system to support this, but use it in a unique way, so that no special programming is required. Instead, we leverage Newspeak's class hierarchy inheritance and platform objects so that all Croquet adaptation is done automatically. This is an interim step toward Newspeak's long-standing goal of orthogonal synchronization. We'll explain what all this means, show how it's done, and speculate on next steps. This will be an online meeting. If you'd like to join us, please sign up in advance on the meeting's  Meetup page  to receive the meeting details.  

This April, the UKSTUG will be hosting Pharo's Esteban Lorenzano to talk about Pharo-CIG - a C++ Interface Generator. The Pharo FFI (Foreign Function Interface) system is an excellent tool that enables Pharo users to create bindings with external C libraries. However, there's a significant drawback that often discourages its use: the bindings must be manually created, a process that can be slow and prone to crashes. Pharo-CIG proposes a solution to bridge that gap. Esteban Lorenzano studied Computer Sciences at Universidad de Buenos Aires, and worked since 1994 in several object-oriented and low-level technologies, in different software companies, serving in various positions from programmer to senior architect. In 2007 he co-founded Smallworks to offer Pharo-based agile development projects. Since 2012 he dedicated full time to developing the Pharo code and community. He works with the INRIA-EVREF team in Lille, France, as core developer for Pharo, being responsi...

For our March meeting, Craig Latta will show how to leverage AI language models in a livecoding environment. Using a tool creates context for complimentary tools. For example, selecting an object in a Smalltalk inspector creates useful context for browsing the class of that object. This is a potent idea in an integrated development environment, where multiple tools operate on related information. The extensive context in a live environment enables powerful collaboration with contemporary AI language models. Tools built from that collaboration could greatly augment human capability. Craig Latta will show some foundations for them, and suggest ways of easing their construction through the systematic description of existing tool functionality. For a preview, please see Craig's blog at thiscontext.com . Craig Latta is a research computer scientist in Berkeley and Amsterdam, with interests including livecoding, music performance, and interactive visualization. The discover...

For our February 2025 presentation, Richard Ronteltap will present his SmallJS project. SmallJS is a free and open source implementation of the elegant and powerful Smalltalk-80 (ST) language. It compiles to JavaScript (JS) that runs in modern browsers or in Node.js. SmallJS is file based, not image based, so you can develop in your favorite IDE. The default setup is for Visual Studio Code, with ST syntax coloring and step debugging! You code separately from the SmallJS base libraries (image) and only the parts you use are imported automatically when running your app. SmallJS is fully object oriented, so customizable on every level. For usability, ST class and method names are kept mostly equal to their familiar JS counterparts. JS libraries already encapsulated in ST are: Browsers: Document, Window, HTML elements, events, CSS, streams. Node.js: HTTP server, Express, 4 databases, files. SmallJS is mostly intended for use by JS devs that want a nicer language to work in...

For our first meeting of the year, we'll hold a retrospective on what has happened in the Smalltalk world in 2024, and discuss what we can expect in 2025. Join us to share what you learned, and what you are looking forward to! This will be an online meeting from home. If you'd like to join us, please sign up in advance on the meeting's  Meetup page  to receive the meeting details. Don’t forget to bring your laptop and drinks!