In the mid 90s I was at an OO database company, and we were expanding into tools. The decision was made to produce a Smalltalk binding and build tools for that

In the mid 90s I was at an OO database company, and we were expanding into tools. The decision was made to produce a Smalltalk binding and build tools for that language. That was well underway when Java was released. And you could hear the air go out of the Smalltalk tires. Java was another OO language, it was designed for “applets” that would run in the browser, and it was created by Sun Microsystems, who built the most popular computers of the day. Nearly everyone who was interested in Smalltalk turned to Java and never looked back.