A lot of programming languages are descendants of ALGOL [1], where the ; is the separator, not a terminator (you don't have to use it on the last statement of a block of code).

Pascal (being based on algol) is the same, and the final "end." statement of the program, which is the main program, has a period/full stop. See end of this sample: [2] A begin / end block is one statement so they end like so "end;" unless it's the last one in a procedure, in which case you don't need the semi-colon.

C was similar, except they made ; a terminator instead of separator, but you don't have to put it at the end of being/end blocks. C just uses { } to make it clear. But then, in C++ I always forget to put ; at the end of a class definition. I get why it's there, but it looks more like a function definition to me which doesn't need a semicolon at the end.

Many languages are also from C or at least the Algol family tree (but usually C), like C++, Java, Javascript, etc.

More about ALGOL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALGOL

[1] Algol sample: http://sandbox.mc.edu/~bennet/cs404/doc/primes_alg.html

[2] Pascal sample: http://courses.washington.edu/css448/zander/Code/array.p

I guess because benefits of 'dot notation' vastly overpass the ones of eol-with-dot.

I always figured its position on the querty keyboard had something to do with it, but would love to know the actual history.

some languages (eg Erlang) do use dots as terminators. Dots are harder to see and verify.

Imagine: A = something+"some string.".

Erlang and prolog use dots in this way.