1. Code Organization and Maintainability:
* Difficult to manage large programs: As programs grow, procedural code can become tangled and difficult to understand, making it hard to maintain and modify. The lack of modularity makes it challenging to isolate and reuse components.
* Limited data abstraction: Data and the operations that act on it are not tightly coupled. This makes it hard to enforce data integrity and can lead to inconsistencies.
* Poor code reusability: Procedural code often relies on global variables and functions, making it challenging to reuse components in different parts of the program or in other projects.
2. Data Security and Encapsulation:
* Global variables: Procedural languages often rely on global variables, which can be accessed and modified from anywhere in the program. This can lead to unintended consequences and make it difficult to control data integrity.
* Lack of encapsulation: Data and the functions that operate on it are not encapsulated together, making it harder to hide implementation details and protect data from unauthorized access.
3. Flexibility and Adaptability:
* Difficult to adapt to changing requirements: Procedural code can be rigid and difficult to adapt to changing requirements. Adding new features often requires modifying existing code, potentially introducing bugs and increasing development time.
* Limited extensibility: Expanding a procedural program can be complex, as it requires modifying the existing structure, potentially affecting other parts of the code.
4. Limited Support for Real-World Modeling:
* Difficulty representing complex real-world systems: Procedural programming struggles to represent complex real-world systems that involve interacting entities and relationships. This can make it difficult to design and implement software for complex applications.
5. Challenges with Concurrency:
* Concurrency difficulties: Managing concurrent processes (multiple tasks running simultaneously) in procedural languages can be challenging due to the lack of built-in mechanisms for synchronization and communication.
Other Limitations:
* Limited support for graphical user interfaces (GUIs): Procedural programming is not inherently well-suited for developing complex GUIs.
* Less efficient for data-intensive applications: Procedural languages can be less efficient for data-intensive applications compared to other paradigms like object-oriented programming.
In summary: While procedural programming is straightforward and has been used for many decades, its limitations in terms of code organization, data security, flexibility, and adaptability have driven the development of more advanced programming paradigms like object-oriented programming.