Blogs:JaroslavTulach:Theory:History of Programming Languages

From APIDesign

A short look at history can quickly explain all our sufferings. I did such excursion in Chapter 1. The need for Cluelessness is shown there by describing history of computer languages and their oscillation between Rationalism and Empiricism resulting in more easy to use languages (e.g. for dummies) that produce programs requiring gigabytes of memory, tons of CPU time and sometimes enormous amount of virtualization to execute.

I believed my explanation was at least a bit entertaining, but it is definitely nothing compared to A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages. Give it a try and read it! Very entertaining and in my opinion showing the incorrigible mankind's desire for cluelessness too.