In computer science, imperative programming, as contrasted with declarative programming, is a programming paradigm that describes computation as statements that change a program state. In much the same way as the imperative mood in natural languages expresses commands to take action, imperative programs are a sequence of commands for the computer to perform. Procedural programming is a common method of executing imperative programming, and the terms are often used as synonyms.
Imperative programming languages stand in contrast to other types of languages, such as functional and logical programming languages. Functional programming languages, such as Haskell, are not a sequence of statements and have no global state as imperative languages do. Logical programming languages, like Prolog, are often thought of as defining "what" is to be computed, rather than "how" the computation is to take place, as an imperative programming language does.

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The canonical examples of imperative programming languages are Fortran and Algol. Others include Pascal, C, and Ada, Perl.
Category:Imperative programming languages provides an exhaustive list.