Digital Solutions

Pseudocode

Pseudocode will be used as the formal method of describing algorithms in the 2025 v1.2 Digital syllabus. It is a descriptive method used to represent an algorithm and is a mixture of everyday language and programming conventions. Pseudocode is often an intermediate step in programming between planning and writing executable code.

Pseudocode does not have a standard format and varies between programmers; however, algorithms must be able to be understood by anyone independent of a particular programming language. When students use pseudocode, they should:

implement the basic control structures of assignment, sequence, selection, condition, iteration and modularisation using capitalised keywords associated with the constructs
indent algorithmic steps where appropriate
consider a case style that works best with the programming language they will be using in their project, e.g. Pascal Case or Camel Case.

The following pseudocode demonstrates examples of assignment (DECLARE), sequence, condition (IF), selection (THEN), iteration (WHILE), modularisation (FUNCTION, CALL), indentation and two variations of case (UserLogin, userName) for a user authentication process:

FUNCTION UserLogin(): DECLARE userName, userPassword AS STRING DECLARE loginAttempts AS INTEGER = 3 OUTPUT "Welcome to Login System." WHILE loginAttempts > 0 INPUT "Enter username:" -> userName INPUT "Enter password:" -> userPassword IF IsValid(userName, userPassword) THEN OUTPUT "Login successful!" ShowDashboard() RETURN END IF loginAttempts -= 1 OUTPUT "Invalid. " & loginAttempts & " attempts left." END WHILE OUTPUT "Try again later." END FUNCTION FUNCTION IsValid(user, pass) AS BOOLEAN: RETURN user = "admin" AND pass = "password123" END FUNCTION FUNCTION ShowDashboard(): OUTPUT "Welcome to Dashboard." END FUNCTION CALL UserLogin()