In procedural programming, the program is written as a collection of actions (a procedure) that are carried out in sequence, one after the other. The order is important.

A procedure is sometimes termed an algorithm.

An ingredient of procedural programming is the idea of state. The actions in a program change the value of data items, usually termed variables. As the program executes, the values of variables change. At any point in time the variables have a set of values, which is their state.