Communications programming with VA Smalltalk Base Using the Communications Subsystem with VA Smalltalk Base requires some expertise with Smalltalk and the communication protocol you are using. However, VA Smalltalk Base gives you flexibility to perform complex forms of communication. Knowledge of how to write scripts that exploit the different layers of the Communications Subsystem is also necessary if you plan to extend the base communication classes to support a protocol not currently implemented by the Communications/Transactions feature.