- 2070 Asar · 2 marks
Limitations of procedural programming
Short answer
Procedural programming has no data security because global data is open to all functions, models real-world poorly, is hard to maintain when data structures change, offers limited reusability, is not easily extensible, and becomes complex in large projects.
Write down the limitations of procedural programming.
Procedural programming (C, Pascal, FORTRAN) divides a program into functions that work on shared data. Its limitations are:
- No data security - Global data is open to every function. A fault in one function can corrupt data used by others.
- Poor modelling of the real world - Data and functions are kept separate, so real objects like "student" or "car" cannot be represented naturally.
- Difficult maintenance - Changing a data structure forces changes in all functions that use it, and large programs become hard to debug.
- Little reusability - Code can be reused only by copying or by calling functions; there is no inheritance.
- Not easily extensible - Adding new features often means editing existing code, which may introduce new errors.
- Top-down only - Large programs become complex as the number of functions grows.
✓ Answer checked by Claude Opus 5.5 (high effort)
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