Fortunate happenstance. There was no guarantee of success.

Interesting factoid: Did you know that in the early 1990s, IBM chose Smalltalk as the centerpiece of its VisualAge enterprise initiative to replace COBOL? IBM had that much faith in Smalltalk.

Unfortunately, Java came along and derailed Smalltalk's future (in case anybody wonders why Smalltalk is no longer in vogue today).

Smalltalk is one of the few programming languages with staying power over time. Last year, it celebrated its 50th anniversary.