"For profit" has many meanings. Most languages are invented to provide a certain kind of leverage that the author thinks is important in solving problems, and s

"For profit" has many meanings. Most languages are invented to provide a certain kind of leverage that the author thinks is important in solving problems, and solving problems is usually financially profitable. How exactly that profit is achieved, by what business model, varies over time. Four that are definitely worth learning about as their inventors and contexts are super interesting and a lot of material is available Alan Kay, Smalltalk Bjarne Stroustrup, C++ Brad Cox, Objective C Rich Hickey, Clojure I would add that JetBrains, the business, has been incredibly and for many very surprisingly successful at being a for profit programming tools company that now has invented their own language variant (Kotlin). Very interesting story.