In our computer world, perhaps the most important word is programming. A computer program is a set of instructions that a computer understands, which is meant for doing a certain job. A computer program can be written in different ways and languages but  most of the programming languages follow either of the two techniques: structured programming and object oriented programming.

Structured programming is the conventional way of programming. Most of the languages follow this technique.Structured programming technique was initially very popular to the programmers. But as the program complexity grew the need of object oriented technique raised.

Structured programming is a procedure oriented technique. It mainly emphasizes on the functions or methods rather than data. Functions are the basic building blocks of a structured programming language. Mainly two types of data, namely local and global, are used. Local data are data, which is accessible & modifiable only in the function where it is defined. Global data are defined outside the functions. In structured technique global data can move freely from one function to another and can be modified by any function that is using it.Programming languages like C, Pascal etc. are structured programming languages.

Object oriented technique is the newest approach of programming. In this technique emphasis is given mainly on data rather than functions or procedures. Here elements named as objects are considered as the critical elements, and this is the basis of object oriented programs. The objects are defined in a special field, called the class. In object oriented technique data can not move freely in the entire program. Here, data are confined in an object and are usually modifiable only to methods defined inside the object. In object oriented technique, highly complex programs also can be easily written. Real life problems can be easily implemented in this technique.  Some of the main features of object oriented programming technique are:

Data hiding

Data abstraction

Inheritance

Polymorphism etc.

Smalltalk, Ada, Obejct pascal etc are examples of object oriented programming languages. C++, an extention of C, is a mixed object oriented language. JAVA is a pure object oriented language.