Most common languages (but not all languages) are basically equivalent, and choosing one or another is more a matter of taste rather than "the best tool for the

Most common languages (but not all languages) are basically equivalent, and choosing one or another is more a matter of taste rather than "the best tool for the job". If, for example, you want to write a web app and need to choose between Ruby, Python or Perl pick the one you know best and go with it. One factor that can make the language choice important is the speed of the program: if you need to make a computationally heavy application, you'd better choose a fast language. This would rule out interpreted languages. In such a case, you should choose Common Lisp/C/C++/Java/C# rather than Perl/Python/Ruby. Another important factor is the platform where your app will be running. If it's on your own server, you can use whatever you prefer. If it's on the iphone, the most abvious choice is Objective-C. If it's a small device with little memory and low computing power, languages with a low memory footprint and manual memory allocation like C and Forth would make a better choice than Python or Ruby.