Comment by pjmlp

I learnt Smalltalk on Smalltalk/V for Windows 3.1, so I also watched that transition take place.

Not sure how it was seen from inside at Cincom, however having a couple of Smalltalk vendors quickly pivoting from Smalltalk into Java, to the point most IDEs and libraries that appeared where from Smalltalk origin, was what ended up killing all existing interest into keeping using Smalltalk products.

There was this language that Sun was pushing for free, with SDKs on cover CDs, alongside plenty of stuff coming from Smalltalk, why pay for expensive Smalltalk IDEs, seemed to be the opinion back then.

So we ended up with Java, .NET, Objective-C, as half way to the whole Smalltalk experience.