Why are some programming languages better for certain types of projects than other programming languages, when they can all essentially do the same thing and they all seem to work the same way?
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Truthfully, they are nominally different. You are right, you can write a program in basically any language. The question is ‘why should I’. If I am programming a back end API that fires every couple of minutes, I get zero benefit of writing it in C but I will have to do a lot of work. I can do a lot *less* work to write it in Python and get the exact same need filled.
And, they don’t all work the same way, many are similar but there are key differences. Python is an interpreted language, Java compiles to ‘bytecode’ that needs to be run in a VM. Others are directly compiled and run right on the operating system. Usually those aren’t really important to your average developer, but there are differences and they can be distinctions you need to respect when designing software. Java is a great example, to run it you need to have java installed on the client. Not a *huge* deal, but a deal nonetheless. A program compiled in C++ for Windows just needs…Windows. Same for Mac or Linux.
TLDR – The right tool is often the easiest to use, and all languages don’t really work the same way and you need to respect that as a software engineer.
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