What is the difference between procedural programm

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I've read the Wikipedia articles for both procedural programming and functional programming, but I'm still slightly confused. Could someone boil it down to the core?

Answer 1

One thing I hadn't seen really emphasized here is that modern functional languages such as Haskell really more on first class functions for flow control than explicit recursion. You don't need to define factorial recursively in Haskell, as was done above. I think something like

fac n = foldr (*) 1 [1..n]

is a perfectly idiomatic construction, and much closer in spirit to using a loop than to using explicit recursion.

Answer 2

In computer science, functional programming is a programming paradigm that treats computation as the evaluation of mathematical functions and avoids state and mutable data. It emphasizes the application of functions, in contrast with the procedural programming style that emphasizes changes in state.

Answer 3

To Understand the difference, one needs to to understand that "the godfather" paradigm of both procedural and functional programming is the imperative programming.

Basically procedural programming is merely a way of structuring imperative programs in which the primary method of abstraction is the "procedure." (or "function" in some programming languages). Even Object Oriented Programming is just another way of structuring an imperative program, where the state is encapsulated in objects, becoming an object with a "current state," plus this object has a set of functions, methods, and other stuff that let you the programmer manipulate or update the state.

Now, in regards to functional programming, the gist in its approach is that it identifies what values to take and how these values should be transferred. (so there is no state, and no mutable data as it takes functions as first class values and pass them as parameters to other functions).

PS: understanding every programming paradigm is used for should clarify the differences between all of them.

PSS: In the end of the day, programming paradigms are just different approaches to solving problems.

PSS: this quora answer has a great explanation.

Answer 4

If you have a chance, I would recommand getting a copy of Lisp/Scheme, and doing some projects in it. Most of the ideas that have lately become bandwagons were expressed in Lisp decades ago: functional programming, continuations (as closures), garbage collection, even XML.

So that would be a good way to get a head start on all these current ideas, and a few more besides, like symbolic computation.

You should know what functional programming is good for, and what it isn't good for. It isn't good for everything. Some problems are best expressed in terms of side-effects, where the same question gives differet answers depending on when it is asked.

Answer 5

Basically the two styles, are like Yin and Yang. One is organized, while the other chaotic. There are situations when Functional programming is the obvious choice, and other situations were Procedural programming is the better choice. This is why there are at least two languages that have recently come out with a new version, that embraces both programming styles. ( Perl 6 and D 2 )

Procedural:

• The output of a routine does not always have a direct correlation with the input.
• Everything is done in a specific order.
• Execution of a routine may have side effects.
• Tends to emphasize implementing solutions in a linear fashion.

Perl 6

sub factorial ( UInt:D $n is copy ) returns UInt {

  # modify "outside" state
  state $call-count++;
  # in this case it is rather pointless as
  # it can't even be accessed from outside

  my $result = 1;

  loop ( ; $n > 0 ; $n-- ){

    $result *= $n;

  }

  return $result;
}

D 2

int factorial( int n ){

  int result = 1;

  for( ; n > 0 ; n-- ){
    result *= n;
  }

  return result;
}

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Functional:

• Often recursive.
• Always returns the same output for a given input.
• Order of evaluation is usually undefined.
• Must be stateless. i.e. No operation can have side effects.
• Good fit for parallel execution
• Tends to emphasize a divide and conquer approach.
• May have the feature of Lazy Evaluation.

Haskell

( copied from Wikipedia );

fac :: Integer -> Integer

fac 0 = 1
fac n | n > 0 = n * fac (n-1)

or in one line:

fac n = if n > 0 then n * fac (n-1) else 1

Perl 6

proto sub factorial ( UInt:D $n ) returns UInt {*}

multi sub factorial (  0 ) { 1 }
multi sub factorial ( $n ) { $n * samewith $n-1 } # { $n * factorial $n-1 }

D 2

pure int factorial( invariant int n ){
  if( n <= 1 ){
    return 1;
  }else{
    return n * factorial( n-1 );
  }
}

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Side note:

Factorial is actually a common example to show how easy it is to create new operators in Perl 6 the same way you would create a subroutine. This feature is so ingrained into Perl 6 that most operators in the Rakudo implementation are defined this way. It also allows you to add your own multi candidates to existing operators.

sub postfix:< ! > ( UInt:D $n --> UInt )
  is tighter(&infix:<*>)
  { [*] 2 .. $n }

say 5!; # 120␤

This example also shows range creation (2..$n) and the list reduction meta-operator ([ OPERATOR ] LIST) combined with the numeric infix multiplication operator. (*)
It also shows that you can put --> UInt in the signature instead of returns UInt after it.

( You can get away with starting the range with 2 as the multiply "operator" will return 1 when called without any arguments )

Answer 6

To expand on Konrad's comment:

and the order of evaluation is not well-defined

Some functional languages have what is called Lazy Evaluation. Which means a function is not executed until the value is needed. Until that time the function itself is what is passed around.

Procedural languages are step 1 step 2 step 3... if in step 2 you say add 2 + 2, it does it right then. In lazy evaluation you would say add 2 + 2, but if the result is never used, it never does the addition.