If you're referring to the period at the end of the sentence, I don't like that rule either.

Seems more natural to have the period after the closing quote, at least in cases like this sentence of yours from above:

>I can't imagine someone named their language "of", "programming", or "in".

But I think there may be cases where period inside and before closing quote may seem better, e.g. if quoting what someone said, like a quoted sentence inside another sentence.

But I'm not an English grammar expert.