[Tutor] OT: Is there a good book that covers the history/evolution of software? [Inspired by the thread: lists, name semantics]

[boB Stepp]

In the beginning (I assume.) there was machine code and only machine
code. And I imagine this was not very good. Then I assume the next
step was assembler, which probably only moderated the (then) tedium of
coding. Then real high level languages were started to be developed,
and this was very good. And then there were various new programming
paradigms developed, and so on. What I am wondering is, is there a
good book that covers in relatively good detail how we started at the
most primitive level, machine code, and evolved to our current
wonderful cornucopia of languages, operating systems, etc.? As the
different threads reveal bits and pieces of the low level guts of
Python, I am becoming more and more fascinated about how all of this
is managed. Just the brief discussion of garbage collection details
going on I find quite interesting.

-- 
boB