I'm going to reveal my ignorance here, but in my defense, I'm an accounting major, and I've never taken a computer science class.
I'm about to start a new project, and I'm considering using Python instead of PHP, even though I am much more adept with PHP, because I have heard that Python is a more powerful language. That got me wondering, what makes one programming language more powerful than another? I figure javascript isn't very powerful because it (generally) runs inside a browser. But, why is Python more powerful than PHP? In each case, I'm giving instructions to the computer, so why are some languages better at interpreting and executing these instructions? How do I know how much "power" I actually need for a specific project?
The stock answer is the only features that make certain languages more powerful than others are language features that cannot be easily replaced by adding libraries.
This definition will almost always list LISP on the top, but has the odd side effect of listing assembly near the top unless special care is taken to exclude it.
What makes some programming languages more powerful than others?