Procedural Programming Vs Object Oriented Programming
Procedural Programming vs Object Oriented Programming
When writing code for a program it is very important to make sure that you use the best language for what the client needs. Prior to making a decision on what language to use, a programmer needs to decide which method he or she wants to use. The two most common methods used by coders in the field today are procedural and object oriented programming (OOP). Making the decision to use an incorrect option could run cause problems during the maintenance stage of the software’s life cycle. Taking the time to determine just what the client needs will assist a programmer with deciding on the proper method to use. Procedural programming is defined as “A list of instructions telling a computer, step-by-step, what to do, usually having a linear order of execution from the first statement to the second and so forth with occasional loops and branches” ("procedural programming," 2014). This method of programming is dependent on procedures that are executed within a program while data is processed separately. As the program goes through the processes any data will be passed between them. While this separation will not be a problem with smaller, less complex programs, it can make the code tougher to read as the program grows in size. Using OOP will prevent this issue along with giving a programmer a couple of features not offered by procedural programming.
Object oriented programming came about in the 1980’s and allowed for more robust programs to be coded. OOP is an approach that “uses “objects” created by programmers to trigger specific functions” (Featherly, K. 2003). All objects in OOP are broken down into methods and fields. Methods are the same as processes in procedural code while the fields are any data needed for the process. Objects are able to store both of these through a process called encapsulation. Since the data is stored within an object, data can be hidden from anything outside of the object,
When writing code for a program it is very important to make sure that you use the best language for what the client needs. Prior to making a decision on what language to use, a programmer needs to decide which method he or she wants to use. The two most common methods used by coders in the field today are procedural and object oriented programming (OOP). Making the decision to use an incorrect option could run cause problems during the maintenance stage of the software’s life cycle. Taking the time to determine just what the client needs will assist a programmer with deciding on the proper method to use. Procedural programming is defined as “A list of instructions telling a computer, step-by-step, what to do, usually having a linear order of execution from the first statement to the second and so forth with occasional loops and branches” ("procedural programming," 2014). This method of programming is dependent on procedures that are executed within a program while data is processed separately. As the program goes through the processes any data will be passed between them. While this separation will not be a problem with smaller, less complex programs, it can make the code tougher to read as the program grows in size. Using OOP will prevent this issue along with giving a programmer a couple of features not offered by procedural programming.
Object oriented programming came about in the 1980’s and allowed for more robust programs to be coded. OOP is an approach that “uses “objects” created by programmers to trigger specific functions” (Featherly, K. 2003). All objects in OOP are broken down into methods and fields. Methods are the same as processes in procedural code while the fields are any data needed for the process. Objects are able to store both of these through a process called encapsulation. Since the data is stored within an object, data can be hidden from anything outside of the object,
References: procedural programming. (2014). In Serials Solutions 360LINK. Retrieved from http://av4kc7fg4g.search.serialssolutions.com.ezproxy.apollolibrary.com/?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&ctx_enc=info%3Aofi%2Fenc%3AUTF-8&rfr_id=info:sid/summon.serialssolutions.com&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:book&rft.genre=book%20item&rft.title=McGraw-Hill+Dictionary+of+Scientific+and+Technical+Terms&rft.atitle=procedural+programming&rft.date=2003-01-01&rft.pub=McGraw-Hill&rft.isbn=9780070423138&rft.externalDocID=5627347¶mdict=en-US Featherly, K. (2003). Object-Oriented programming. In S. Jones (Ed.), Encyclopedia of new media. (pp. 351-353). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc. doi: http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.apollolibrary.com/10.4135/9781412950657.n180