Programming is a vast field and one that is constantly evolving. With so many different technologies and frameworks available today, beginners tend to rush through the fundamentals. It's no secret that to be a successful programmer, you need to have a thorough understanding of the basics, regardless of what language or framework you’re working in.

One such fundamental is understanding the main programming paradigms (models) and how they differ. Today, we'll be taking a closer look at procedural and object-oriented programming and seeing what sets them apart.

Procedural Programming

The procedural programming model is derived from structured programming and also uses selection, repetition, and sequences. Procedural programming uses procedures to instruct the computer what to do in a series of steps.

These procedures can also be referred to as functions, routines, or subroutines. A program or any part of it can call any routine at any time during its execution.

Coding terminal on a MacBook

Procedural programming is also referred to as "inline programming", and it takes a top-down approach to execute instructions and solve problems. A simple program that calls any number of routines for different operations can be said to use a procedural programming approach.

Object-Oriented Programming

Object-oriented programming is a fascinating programming model that uses the concept of objects. It organizes software design around objects or data rather than logic and functions. As a result, developers who use object-oriented programming aim to manipulate the objects rather than the program logic.

Large and complex programs are often designed as object-oriented programs because it significantly improves reusability, efficiency, scalability, and collaborative development. Android and iOS mobile apps are commonly designed with object-oriented programming languages such as Java. Object-oriented programming uses the principles of data abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism.

Now take a look at the structure of an object-oriented program.

Related: How to Keep Your Code Clean With Object Encapsulation

Each object-oriented program has at least one class to which an object belongs and objects that are class instances. Every object has its own set of attributes that contain data. Each class will also contain methods or functions that you can call on each object to perform a specific operation.

sample OOP code

Above, we have created a simple object-oriented program of cars registered in a small town. Every car has its own unique make, model, color, engine capacity, and registration number. In the sample code above, the class is Cars, and every instance of this class will have a unique set of attributes. We have also created a method called updateRegistration methods to update the registration number in case the car gets sold.

What’s the Difference?

Now that you have a decent understanding of these two programming paradigms, let's take a closer look at their significant differences. In procedural programming, the main program is divided into small sections known as functions, whereas in object-oriented programming, the program is divided into objects.

In contrast to procedural programming, object-oriented programs use a bottom-up approach.

Binary code for storage and processing

A significant difference lies in the usage of access specifiers in object-oriented programs. Access specifiers protect data from unauthorized access and are implementations of the data encapsulation principle mentioned above. Due to the data encapsulation and abstraction principles, programs designed in object-oriented programming are much more secure and based on the real world.

Almost all programming languages support structured programming; popular ones include C, FORTRAN, and BASIC. Alternatively, C++, Java, C#, and Python are some popular object-oriented programming languages used in the real world.

Understand the Fundamentals

Today, many newcomers only focus on learning a popular framework such as React or Node.js and completely disregard the core programming concepts such as object-oriented programming and data structures. Interviewers often ask questions that involve basic programming concepts, which might be an issue for you if you're not familiar with the fundamentals of programming.