The programming paradigm is the way of writing computer programs. There are four programming paradigms and they are as follows.

• Monolithic programming paradigm
• Structured-oriented programming paradigm
• Procedural-oriented programming paradigm
• Object-oriented programming paradigm

Monolithic Programming Paradigm

The Monolithic programming paradigm is the oldest. It has the following characteristics. It is also known as the imperative programming paradigm.

• In this programming paradigm, the whole program is written in a single block.
• We use the goto statement to jump from one statement to another statement.
• It uses all data as global data which leads to data insecurity.
• There are no flow control statements like if, switch, for, and while statements in this paradigm.
• There is no concept of data types.

An example of a Monolithic programming paradigm is Assembly language.

Structure-oriented Programming Paradigm

The Structure-oriented programming paradigm is the advanced paradigm of the monolithic paradigm. It has the following characteristics.

• This paradigm introduces a modular programming concept where a larger program is divided into smaller modules.
• It provides the concept of code reusability.
• It is introduced with the concept of data types.
• It also provides flow control statements that provide more control to the user.
• In this paradigm, all the data is used as global data which leads to data insecurity.

Examples of a structured-oriented programming paradigm is ALGOL, Pascal, PL/I and Ada.

Procedure-oriented Programming Paradigm

The procedure-oriented programming paradigm is the advanced paradigm of a structure-oriented paradigm. It has the following characteristics.

• This paradigm introduces a modular programming concept where a larger program is divided into smaller modules.
• It provides the concept of code reusability.
• It is introduced with the concept of data types.
• It also provides flow control statements that provide more control to the user.
• It follows all the concepts of structure-oriented programming paradigm but the data is defined as global data, and also local data to the individual modules.
• In this paradigm, functions may transform data from one form to another.

Examples of procedure-oriented programming paradigm is C, visual basic, FORTRAN, etc.

Object-oriented Programming Paradigm

The object-oriented programming paradigm is the most popular. It has the following characteristics.

• In this paradigm, the whole program is created on the concept of objects.
• In this paradigm, objects may communicate with each other through function.
• This paradigm mainly focuses on data rather than functionality.
• In this paradigm, programs are divided into what are known as objects.
• It follows the bottom-up flow of execution.
• It introduces concepts like data abstraction, inheritance, and overloading of functions and operators overloading.
• In this paradigm, data is hidden and cannot be accessed by an external function.
• It has the concept of friend functions and virtual functions.
• In this paradigm, everything belongs to objects.

Examples of procedure-oriented programming paradigm is C++, Java, C#, Python, etc.