As a general rule, the C family of languages are very popular, and very old. Java uses the C syntax, so if you are familiar with C syntax, Java will be more familiar. There is also the odd bit that C# developers have an higher average pay than VB developers, even though the two languages were converged by MS, and they generate the same IL, so the language doesn't really matter. In fact, there was talk, a few years back, of a compiler that would allow you to write some methods in VB and others in C# inside the same class or module. It would make sense, though it wouldn't be particularly useful.

The problem with the C syntax is that it is archaic and archane. The latter is probably the reason that the language is so beloved. Coders are a bunch of geeks, so writing in something that looks like line noise makes it look more mysterious. I suspect that that is the reason that C# is actually considered superior to VB. This distinction comes from back before .NET, when VB6 was considered a toy language, while nearly everything else was included in the club of "real languages", an attitude that has translated over into .NET, despite it being fundamentally absurd.

The archaic nature of the C syntax leads to stupid anachronisms like the semicolon and the case sensitive nature of variables. Those aren't there because they provide any actual value to the language, they are there because C dates from the dawn of computing when CPUs had no reserve processing power, so they couldn't handle things such as auto-correcting case, which VB does, or figuring out where the line ends, which VB does. Much of the symbolic nature of operators in the C syntax may also come from a time when bytes were precious. You could type curly braces (two bytes, one for open, one for close) in less space than End If (six characters, with none needed for open). Oddly, unless it has recently changed, MS also has a broken Intellisense in C#, for no reason that I can understand.

Frankly, VB is a better language by design, but it carries a prejudice that probably began very early, possibly with the initial BASIC.