Figured this might be the best place to ask. I'm curious if there's any good books that give some detail on how and/or why some programming languages evolved the way they did, especially during the ...

Computers need programming languages to function. That’s just a simple fact of life. However, these languages didn’t just spring up out of nowhere. They were developed by people for explicit purposes.

The Java programming language emerged roughly 25 years ago, when Smalltalk and C++ dominated. Back then it was easy to argue that the world didn't need another object-oriented programming language.

Bel is interesting, not least because it highlights the enduring and improbable longevity of one of the earliest high-level programming languages. That’s no small feat, especially given the ...