There are many different types of programming languages, but they can generally be grouped into four categories:
- Procedural languages: These languages, such as C and Pascal, focus on explicitly specifying the steps that a computer should take to accomplish a specific task. They are based on the procedural programming paradigm and use procedures or functions to organize the code.
- Object-oriented languages: These languages, such as Java and C++, are based on the concept of “objects” which have properties and methods and are instances of a class. They are based on the object-oriented programming paradigm and use classes, objects, encapsulation, inheritance and polymorphism as the main concepts.
- Functional languages: These languages, such as Lisp and Haskell, focus on evaluating mathematical functions and avoiding changing-state and mutable data. They are based on the functional programming paradigm and use recursion, lambda calculus and immutability as the main concepts.
- Scripting languages: These languages, such as Python, Perl, and JavaScript, are designed to be used for writing scripts to automate repetitive tasks or to quickly create small programs. They are mostly interpreted and can be used for both small and large-scale programming.
Each language belongs to one or multiple of this categories and depending on the project or task one might be more suitable than the others, for example, C and C++ are good for system programming, Python and R are good for data analysis and scientific computing and JavaScript and PHP are popular for web development.