Difference between Procedural and Non Procedural Language

The procedural programming languages follow sequences of statements as instruction and therefore require to write more code and also the statements can be executed faster as they are more memory efficient.

The Non procedural programming languages are domain-specific and are developed to fulfill one single purpose and their syntax is more easier to read and understand which makes it less prone to error and easy to learn. It can also perform higher complicated tasks that their domain requires.

Difference between Procedural and Non Procedural Language

Procedural Vs Non Procedural Languages

Procedural Programming Languages	Non-procedural Programming Languages
The procedural language is written as a series of instructions	The non procedural language are written natural language instruction
In this language, the programmer has to provide instructions about what is to be done and how it is to be done	In this language, the programmer does only provides information about what is to be done only
The procedural language are more command-driven	The non procedural language are more function-driven
The return function can only be applied to certain data types	The return function can support any data types and values
The length of the procedural programing language is more than non procedural because they have a less predefined library and class	The length of the non procedural programming language is less as due to the presence of rich library and classes
These languages are more memory efficient	These languages are less memory efficient
These language semantics includes characters, mathematical operator, etc which makes it better than assembly language which used mnemonic codes	This language semantic includes natural language are very simple for a programmer
The procedural programming language is focused on an approach for solving the problem	The non procedural programming language is domain-specific such as database, web development, etc
The procedural programming can support simple mathematical instructions	The non procedural programming language can support complex mathematical instructions
This language support both the iterative loops and recursive calls	This language support only recursive calls
The memory location changes as the next statement are executed	The same memory location can execute a series of instruction
It depends on the order of execution	It depends on the values of the parameter from the function
The reuse of the code concept is not much developed	The reuse of the code concept is present
They can execute faster and they require less resource to compile and interpret	They can execute slower because of so many libraries and classes
The example of procedural language involves Fortran, Cobol, Fortran, basic, etc.	The example of non procedural language includes java, SQL, C++, etc.

 

What is Procedural Programming Language ?

Procedural programming is the first programming paradigm that the new developer will begin with. The procedural code consists of simple instruction directing logical steps to the machine. 

Procedural programming is a top-down approach which means that it treats the data and the procedures as two separate entities. As in a procedural call, the procedural programming divides the program into the procedure ( also known as routines) which clearly instructs the set of steps for the execution.

As Quoted by Wikipedia – 

Procedural programming is a programming paradigm, derived from structured programming, based on the concept of the procedure call. Procedures (a type of routine or subroutine) 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. 

Advantages of Procedural Programming Languages

1. An excellent general-purpose programming language
2. Best suited for compilers and interpreters due to its simplicity
3. Portable source code making it platform-independent
4. Reusable code without the need to copy
5. Easy to track and debug the code

Disadvantages of Procedural Programming Languages

1. Heavily relies on blocks and scope
2. Greater difficulty in writing the code
3. Difficult to relate with a real-world object
4. Need to recreate code for different application
5. Operations are given more importance over data
6. the data is open to the public creating security issues

Examples of Procedural Programming Languages

1. FORTRON (Formula Translation)
2. COBOL(Common Business-Oriented Language)
3. C language
4. BASIC (Beginners All-Purpose Symbolic Language)
5. Pascal

 

What is Non Procedural Programming Language ?

In Non-Procedural Programming Languages, the programmer needs to specify “what the program should do” rather than “how the program should perform the task” (the how the part is left up to the language’s implementation rather than programmer’s implementation). 

The Non Procedural Languages were preferred over the non procedural languages in higher generation of languages.

As Quoted by Wikipedia –

Declarative programming (Non-Procedural Programming) often considers programs as theories of formal logic, and computations as deductions in that logic space. Declarative programming may greatly simplify writing parallel programs

Advantages of Non-Procedural Programming Languages

1. Eliminates the need for a large amount of code to define procedures
2. Offer data protected environment
3. Highly reusable 

Disadvantages of Non-Procedural Programming Languages

1. A large amount of memory required
2. Slower processing by compiler and interpreters
3. The slower speed of the execution

Examples of Non-Procedural Programming Languages

1. Java
2. C++
3. C#
4. SQL (Structured Query Language)