The Cheeky Monkey Media Blog

A few words from the apes, monkeys, and various primates that make up the Cheeky Monkey Super Squad.

Pseudocode Programming banner image

Before writing any actual code for a module or project, you should try to construct your code idea in a low language(Plain English), which is a good practice. Then, when you write the actual code, the steps will be clear and automatic to create. A great benefit to this is that you have now a comments section to add to your code so future programmers will grasp the code easily.

Let’s look at an example:

PROGRAM MakeDoubleDoubleCoffee:
    Organize everything together;
    Add coffee in coffee machine;
    Add water to coffee machine;
    Start coffee machine;
    Pour coffee into cup;
    Add two sugars;
    Add two creams;
    Serve;
END

This is a straightforward program for making coffee. Now, what if you don’t like sugar? We need to add a condition into the Pseudocode for that:

PROGRAM MakeDoubleDoubleCoffee:
    Organize everything together;
    Add coffee in coffee machine;
    Add water to coffee machine;
    Start coffee machine;
    Pour coffee into cup;
    IF ( sugar is required )
        THEN Add two sugars;
        ELSE don’t add two sugars;
    ENDIF
    Add two creams;
    Serve;
END

What if we want a loop in this program? Let’s say we want to fill the cup until it’s full. I really love coffee…

PROGRAM MakeDoubleDoubleCoffee:
    Organize everything together;
    Add coffee in coffee machine;
    Add water to coffee machine;
    Start coffee machine;
    WHILE (coffee cup is not full)
        Do keep filling cup of coffee;
    END WHILE
    IF (sugar is required)
        THEN Add two sugars;
        ELSE don’t add two sugars;
    ENDIF
    Add two creams;
    Serve;
END

There it is. A program that fills up your cup of coffee and adds sugar if requested.

Pseudocode is plain, simple, and easy. You don’t need a background in computer programming to understand; therefore allowing developers to bring non-programmers (like the clients) into the development stages and benefiting from their input on things and helping to formulate their own end product.

It isn’t a programming language, but it can be used with ANY programming language. Some languages are better for certain tasks. Using pseudocode is a good alternative to getting the work started and not wasting any development time.

Believe it or not,s there is a programming language that resembles pseudocode a lot. They are called “Behat” and “Cucumber” … weird names I know.

Let’s look a Behat. Behat is a Behaviour-driven development framework and works with PHP. The way the framework works is by writing human-readable sentences that outline the features and how it works, then writing some behavior behind these human sentences.

Here is an example taken from the Behat website:

Imagine you’re about to create the famous UNIX “ls” command. Before you begin, you describe how the feature should work:

Feature: ls

In order to see the directory structure, as a UNIX user, I need to be able to list the current directory’s contents.

 Scenario:
   Given I am in a directory "test"
   And I have a file named "foo"
   And I have a file named "bar"
   When I run "ls"
   Then I should get:
     """
     bar
     foo
     """

In the example above, we can see that it resembles pseudocode a lot. Cucumber is almost very similar.

Pseudocode and Behat are powerful approaches to programming and fun to use. Here are some pages to look at for more behat information:

Posted in Web Development