I think it's great to start (design) high-level tests in human language - in a chart, in a spreadsheet, in lines or paragraphs. Of course, in Cucumber you use s

I think it's great to start (design) high-level tests in human language - in a chart, in a spreadsheet, in lines or paragraphs. Of course, in Cucumber you use structured English in a slightly inflexible way. But the code should be something that you can walk through when you are running tests. This is what Cucumber is not great at. You want tests that tell a story, but the code is all in a phrasebook. After some initial experience with Cucumber, I think I will switch to an old-school low-tech approach that I've used many times -- design in conversational English steps, convert those lines to comments, and write code in-between (in this case, using Steak).  The flexibility seems like a much bigger advantage than the automation Cucumber provides.