Lesson 012

Programming Languages

Levels · Execution · Paradigms · Use Cases

1:00

How code goes from human-readable text to machine instructions — and how to choose the right language for a job.

By the end, you can

  • Order languages on the abstraction ladder and explain the higher/lower tradeoff.
  • Describe the compiled, interpreted, and hybrid execution pipelines step by step.
  • Explain why "compiled vs interpreted" is a property of the implementation, not the language.
  • Identify the paradigm (imperative, declarative, procedural, OO, functional) used in a short code snippet.
  • Distinguish dynamic from static typing, and strong from weak typing.
  • Predict whether a given error would be caught at compile time or at runtime.
  • Match Python, JavaScript, C++, and SQL to their primary use cases.
  • Apply the five-question framework (level, execution, paradigm, typing, use case) to size up any new language.
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