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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* The two main differences are between languages that get fully compiled before hand and those that get “interpreted” during run-time.
* What does that mean?
* A language like C++ is written at a high level and then it goes through a process to turn it into literal binary code and gets stored somewhere.
* When it’s time to run that code, it first gets loaded into system memory and then gets fed to the processor.
* A language like Python is written in a high level and then gets stored somewhere.
* When it’s time to run that code, *then* it goes through the process the ultimately turns it into binary that gets loaded into memory and then fed to the processor.
* The advantage of a language like C++ is that is operates very quickly (there are lots of other related advantages too)
* But the downside is, it has to be compiled for a specific type of computer system running a certain type of processor.
* With Python, its a lot slower because the compiling has to be done in real-time while the code is bring run.
* The benefit, though, is that you can write the code generically, and then use it on whatever computer system you want as long as that computer system has the software to interpret it properly.
* Some projects needs the speed that C++ yields, and some projects need the portability that Python yields.
* *Standard disclaimers about this just being a stripped down ELI5 example lacking a lot of details.*
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