Procedural programming is a programming paradigm that is derived from imperative programming and is based on the concept of the procedure call. Procedures, also known as routines, subroutines, or functions, simply consist of a series of computational steps to be carried out. During a programs execution, any given procedure might be called at any point, including by other procedures or itself. The first major procedural programming languages appeared in the late 1950s and early 1960s, including Fortran, ALGOL, COBOL, PL/I, and BASIC.

Procedural programming is often used synonymously with imperative programming, but procedural programming relies heavily on blocks and scope, whereas imperative programming as a whole may or may not have such features. Procedural languages generally use reserved words that act on blocks, such as if, while, and for, to implement control flow, whereas non-structured imperative languages use goto statements and branch tables for the same purpose.

In contrast to procedural programming, object-oriented programming (OOP) is based on the concept of objects that contain data in the form of attributes and code in the form of methods. OOP focuses on breaking down a programming task into objects that expose behavior (methods) and data (members or attributes) using interfaces. Procedural programming, on the other hand, focuses on breaking down a programming task into a collection of variables, data structures, and subroutines.

In summary, procedural programming is a programming paradigm that uses sets of functions and commands to complete actions. It is based on the concept of the procedure call and involves writing down a list of instructions to tell the computer what it should do step-by-step to finish the task at hand.