Page "Procedural programming" Paragraph 1

Procedural programming can sometimes be used as a synonym for imperative programming ( specifying the steps the program must take to reach the desired state ), but can also refer ( as in this article ) to a programming paradigm, derived from structured programming, based upon the concept of the procedure call.

Procedures, also known as routines, subroutines, methods, 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.