This certainly doesn't prove your case. Alternate quite plausible explanation: Vendors of Smalltalk started realizing that Smalltalk just wasn't it, for whatev

This certainly doesn't prove your case. Alternate quite plausible explanation: Vendors of Smalltalk started realizing that Smalltalk just wasn't it, for whatever reason (the comment you're replying to posits that it was VB's existence vs. the high-cost, big-iron workstation more elite-based outlay that pervaded the Smalltalk community). When they realized this, they started looking to pivot to something else. VB was microsoft-owned and writing an entirely new VB-esque environment seemed like a daunting exercise, and didn't mesh with the strengths of the company (given that they went all-in on smalltalk, it's a self-selecting argument). It's not weird nor indicative of much that java was good enough that they all ended up there. It was simply the easiest thing to switch to once a vendor decides to ditch smalltalk. I guess if java didn't exist, it is theoretically possible that e.g. IBM would have stuck with smalltalk, but then positing that this would mean smalltalk would have survived and thrived is _quite_ a reach. More likely IBM and co would continue to believe smalltalk was a dead end and instead they'd all have gone with python or objC or some such, or a bunch of them would work together to make a java-like language of their own, or one of them would have and the rest would join in a few years later, or they'd all start publishing competing languages. Who knows - but "they'd have stuck it out with smalltalk and smalltalk would have outgrown its problems, or the dev community at large would outgrow their obsession with VB / low-cost entry more blue-collar stuff and gone back to smalltalk" seems like a bizarre conclusion here.