[ UK Smalltalk User Group ]

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...

 This talk explores what it means to work with AI from inside a live Pharo system rather than treating AI as an external chatbot. I will demonstrate experiments where AI models are invoked directly from the Playground, including a concrete implementation of conversation history (AIAHistory) and experiments across multiple models and providers. Rather than focusing on code generation, the emphasis is on workflows: how different conversation structures affect results, how styles and constraints can be imposed on generated comments, and how AI systems can be inspected for systematic errors and limitations. Examples include documentation support, UML generation (via PlantUML), and experiments in automated paper review. The talk is experimental in nature and rooted in Smalltalk’s strengths: reflection, live objects, and tools that are part of the system rather than bolted on. The goal is not to present a finished framework, but to share concrete insights, failures, and possibilities for...