What is imperative (procedural) programming?

Imperative programming is a paradigm in which a program describes computations as a sequence of instructions to change the state. The main focus is on how to achieve the result by describing the steps to be performed.

Key features:

• Sequence of instructions: The program executes step by step.
• State change: The program operates on variables whose values can change during execution.
• Flow control: Constructs like loops (for, while) and branches (if/else) are used to control the order of instruction execution.
• Procedures / functions: Code is organized into blocks (procedures or functions) that can be called to perform specific tasks.

Example in pseudocode:

// Initialize variable
let x = 5;

// Condition
if x > 0 {
  // Increase variable value
  x = x + 1;
}

// Output value
print(x); 

Procedural programming is a subset of imperative programming, with a particular emphasis on using procedures (subroutines or functions) to organize code.

The difference from other paradigms (for example, declarative): in imperative style, we tell the computer WHAT to do step by step, whereas in declarative style, we describe WHAT we want to achieve without describing HOW to do it.