There was also a strong vibe coming out of MS at the time that C# was the "real" .NET language, while VB.NET was a red-headed stepchild, a half-baked sop they'd thrown out to the huge community of VB developers so MS could say they weren't abandoning them completely. And since VB.NET was different enough from VB6 to effectively be learning a new language anyway, lots of folks figured that if they were going to have to learn a new language they may as well learn the one that MS really cared about.