<Tr> <Td> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> </Td> </Tr> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> <P> Procedural programming is a programming paradigm, derived from structured programming, based upon the concept of the procedure call . Procedures, also known as routines, subroutines, or functions (not to be confused with mathematical functions, but similar to those used in functional programming), simply contain a series of computational steps to be carried out . Any given procedure might be called at any point during a program's execution, including by other procedures or itself . The first major procedural programming languages first appeared circa 1960, including Fortran, ALGOL, COBOL and BASIC . Pascal and C were published closer to the 1970s, while Ada was released in 1980 . Go is an example of a more modern procedural language, first published in 2009 . </P> <P> Computer processors provide hardware support for procedural programming through a stack register and instructions for calling procedures and returning from them . Hardware support for other types of programming is possible, but no attempt was commercially successful (for example Lisp machines or Java processors). </P>

This is a set of programming language statements that together perform a specific task