Why can't I do my pseudocode classwork/homework in a Word document?
Pseudocode has syntax and style like any other programming language. Ours includes that names are case-sensitive and indentation.
Word is designed for writing correct English syntax instead and will try to "help" you by standardizing capitalization, changing indents, and also "correcting" spelling. So if you type correct pseudocode in Word, Word will do its best to make it wrong for you.
A text editor should not do this (although notepad is getting less and less trustworthy about things like that so notepad++ is probably your best choice)
Why do you use Java as an implementation langauge instead of C?
The point of having an implementation language for this course instead of doing everything in pseudocode is that it is difficult to understand why things work or not if you can't run your code and try it out. I want that to be as easy for you to do as possible.
Java was originally designed as a teaching language; it hides some of the fiddly details that beginners often struggle with, while in languages like C you have more up-front complexity to deal with even when you're just trying to learn the basics. These fiddly details often represent powerful or sophisticated abilities that languages like C give programmers access to that are lacking in Java, and we will mention those as they come up.