LouisEleven

Why does it even matter what programming language is being used when everything is compiled to machine code in the end? Wouldn't it be possible to convert any programming language into the same intermediate representation?

When googling this myself, many answers are something like: each language has its own characteristics which makes it more or less suited for solving certain problems. But why does that matter, if they all end up being machine code? What am I missing, or what are the difficulties with creating such a universal representation?