At ESUG 2026 I presented Pulsar, a new coding-first IDE for Pharo. The talk explores why staying close to the code still matters in the age of generative agents—and where Pulsar is heading next.
At ESUG this year —2026, for those reading this from the future— I presented Pulsar, a new IDE for Pharo, with a strong focus on coding.
That may sound like an obvious thing for an IDE to focus on. But in these days of RAD reborn in the form of generative agents, perhaps it is not so obvious after all.
Pulsar comes from a fairly simple idea: programming tools should help programmers understand the system, navigate it, change it, and stay close to the code while doing so. Generative tools can certainly help, but I do not think they make those capabilities less important. If anything, they make them more important.
The ESUG talk was my attempt to explain that direction, show where Pulsar is today, and give a glimpse of where I would like to take it.
The video and slides are now online:
Slides: Pulsar: A New Pharo IDE — Growing the Power User in You
And, of course, you can find Pulsar itself here:
Pulsar is still very much a work in progress, but it is already usable, and feedback is more than welcome.