Procedural programming

Procedural programming describes a way of decomposition of a programming problem, when a larger problem is decomposed into smaller ones by means of subprograms. This type of decomposition is called procedural. It is typical for imperative programming and functional programming paradigms.

In object-oriented programming procedural decomposition plays a subordinate role. Subprograms become methods of objects, which replace the former as building blocks.

Historically procedural programming played a decisive role in transformation of programming into engineering activity. Until present the great majority of reusable software components is designed, deployed, and maintained in the form libraries of subprograms.