Principles of Procedural Programming
The type of programming that this work will be concentrating on is known as Procedural Programming. This programming paradigm was first created in the 1960s and is used in many programming languages, making it the most common programming paradigm. C, Pascal, FORTRAN and COBOL are all examples of programming languages that use procedural programming. It is called procedural programming as it based on giving the program a series of actions conducted in a certain order or manner (procedures for it to follow).
Procedural Programming (it is also known as imperative programming or modular programming) is a subset of structured programming and is the most intuitive way of telling a program what to do. Contrary to other programming types, procedural programming creates a chain of equations which can change outcomes depending on the variables included. It does this by using control structures (e.g. IF, WHILE, etc). Procedural programming gives the computer step by step instructions, which as well as giving the computer an initial instruction, it also gives it instructions about what to do if it encounters certain problems. If it comes to the end of its instructions, it can be looped back to the start, indefinitely if needed. As long as the problems that the computer might come across are foreseen, they can be written into the code, so the computer can work out the best route to take from its given instructions. It cannot however, overcome obstacles or difficulties that it does not have a pathway for – so going back into the code and adding new instructions is needed if this occurs. One of the easiest ways to visualise procedural programming is thinking of it as a flow chart, with different pathways created when a new event occurs or a new problem is faced. It works in a linear fashion, so it will go from the start, follow a pathway to an eventual end, and then if needed, loop back and start again. This design method is called the Top Down method. The instructions used in procedural programming are called procedures, and are also known as routines, sub-routines or functions.
Pros of working with procedural programming are: it is good for general use programming, it is the most natural way of telling the computer what to do, there are a lot of well-tried and tested coding algorithms, it is easy to keep track of program flow, needs less memory than other types of programming, it is good for global sharing and it is flexible as as the source code can run on different types of processors.
Cons of working with procedural programming are: changing one bit of code can effect more of the code further down - creating more problems and bugs, importance designated to operation rather than data, meaning that data is exposed to the whole program - creating poor security for data, it is difficult to relate to real world objects and for large projects it can be difficult to find and keep track of code.
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