Why Pseudocode Comes Before Python or JavaScript
The first language taught here is not a real one, and that is the point.
Every lesson chain on Learn to Write Code runs the same way: understand the concept, write it in pseudocode, then write the same thing again in Python, then again in JavaScript. Coders Rock's challenge sets follow that order too -- pseudocode first, on purpose, in every one of the eight sets.
Pseudocode reads close to plain English -- CREATE a variable, SHOW its value, REPEAT WHILE something is true -- so a mistake in a pseudocode challenge is almost always a mistake in the logic, not a missing semicolon or a misremembered keyword. That separation is the whole reason it comes first: it isolates "did I think this through" from "did I spell it the way this particular language wants."
Press Run to see what your code does.
Run that and you'll see 3, 2, 1 -- a countdown. Every one of the eight challenge sets has a Python and a JavaScript version of the same idea, and once the logic above makes sense, translating it into either language is a much smaller step than learning the logic and the syntax at the same time. That is also why the console can convert a pseudocode program into Python or JavaScript directly: the logic already transferred, so the conversion has one job left, not two.
Everything above runs in this page, on your own machine. There is more of it on the practice pages.