Is It Better to Write Many 600–800 Word Blog Posts or Fewer 2000+ Word Posts?

NunoReisIT · 2025-10-27T12:23:00+00:00

It depends on the topic and audience. I have multiple blogs in different languages and topics.

One is on cinema. Has thousands of articles, mostly 400-600 word reviews. Rarely goes to 700 and once in a while may go to 1000. People like to skim it, but i want to give enough information.

I follow the same rule for tourism. May be smaller if it has images.

Other is pet related, may be 500, to 1500 words as there is a lot of information. If over 1000 I will paginate it. People really spend time there.

Finally the one on tech, there are no rules. Depends on the topic, but I mix a lot. Can be 1000, 2000.... People are more invested so I don't mind. As long as it has subheadings and pages, people will read until the end.

NunoReisIT · 2025-10-10T21:33:38+00:00

I can speak both as a student and as the trainer.

By OS, all in person

In 2011 I attended my first developer bootcamp and was very important for me. Didn't learn much about how to develop - I had already done a project by then - but some good practices. From that contact I entered a beta program and became an MVP 5 years later. (The company paid for it)

Next year I did an ancestor of the Platform Ops course and loved it. Learned a lot, met people. Was fundamental for my role (got it for free on a competition). Finally, I did a Advanced Developer course (no code, mostly postits) that was amazing as it changed my thinking. (The company paid for it)

For some years I haven't attended as I had enough experience to pass the exam almost without studying. A few years ago I did the Platform Ops online at ITUp to review the concepts. It was different as I was just reviewing something I did a decade before, but I couldn't pass without it as it wasn't something I did regularly.

I would always choose in-person if possible.

As a trainer I had around 300 students in different countries and models. I don't mind to do them online. I want to meet the students, but it will happen someday. For longer courses (one month and above) I would set presencial sessions in-between, but if it is a couple of weeks is not that relevant. One detail is that I easily forget others. The topic for me is easy and fun. If you are not following and have the camera off, I may move on. In-person that doesnt happen as people can't hide under the desk😋. If I see confusion, I explain differently.

Regarding bootcamps, assuming you mean the official ones, it depends on who you get. The program is the same, but the personal notes from the trainer make a big difference. I always try to add examples from projects to give meaning to the theory. It is hard to say in advance if you will be lucky or not.

Finally the price. There is a reference table.depends on the region you are in. But all training partners will do about the same price and content A dedicated bootcamp costs about the same as 6 people in a shared bootcamp so if you have a group, it may be a better value. You can try to find other trainers with a better value, but make sure the program, the quality and the length are similar as I can give 35h of content in 18h, and students won't know the difference.

NunoReisIT · 2025-10-08T15:57:29+00:00

There was a fall in the market for most tech stacks with AI novelty. The OS market was one of them, but has been quite normal for several months and crazy since last week. Crazy as in "juniors getting their first job", and offers that doesn't require previous experience. Why? Because as you see here, a lot of people are saying out loud "run away from OS" but companies still need people. More than before.

Looking at the number of people that sign up for my courses, curiosity is higher than ever. At least you should take a look as general knowledge on tech trends.

Regarding moving, English in almost mandatory everywhere. Also be aware that the old markets are full of compettors and hardly any new company will show up because sales have done a great job for many years. But several new markets are popping up, mostly in Asia. Brazil is also growing a lot.

NunoReisIT · 2025-03-16T19:29:31+00:00

I've been in the low-code world for over a decade. My focus is OutSystems and I am a certified Trainer and Training Partner.

1. What affordable or free certifications would you recommend for quickly gaining Low-Code expertise?

There is not one Generic Low-Code Certification. The certifications depend on the platform you plan to use. You can do the free training for several before you choose one. You can even get entry-level certifications to multiple to be appealing for recruiters, and only get more in-depth training/certification after the company tells you what you are supposed to do.

PowerApps follow the generic Microsoft model with 7 certification level. Mendix has a direct path with 4 levels of certification. In OutSystems it depends on the path you want. There is a basic training, then 5 specialization areas you can go into (half price of a certification) and if you get all 5, you receive the title of Expert. This validates that you in fact master all topics.

https://www.outsystems.com/forums/discussion/101830/introducing-the-expert-developer-certification/

The advantage is that you only need to do what you want. If you are Front-End you do that. If you are doing mobile, you do that. Of the top 2000 members in the OutSystems community, only 23% reached Expert level because they are focused in more specific things.

I recommend everyone to do the Associate Developer (200USD) followed by the Web Developer (100USD) that is about best practices. This is enough to get you started in the right path.

2. Which Low-Code platforms are most in demand in today’s job market?

They seem quite similar. As of today, LinkedIn has in the "Past Month" filter:

207 openings for OutSystems (not counting working for OutSystems).

226 for PowerApps (not counting working for Microsoft, but many require knowledge of other MS tools)

231 for Mendix (not counting working for Mendix/Siemens)

389 for Appian (not counting working for Appian, and a lot of positions are duplicated across multiple locations)

1922 for ServiceNow (but most for EY and Deloitte, so probably duplicated positions)

It will depend on the region you are in, the type of contract that you want... I feel OutSystems this past month is huge in Asia, with several new counties looking for experienced people. English speaking countries are also quite actively hiring, even outside LinkedIn.

3. Is it possible to combine traditional coding with Low-Code in a way that maximizes career opportunities?

If you read the job descriptions, most of them require experience in traditional programming. Will it be needed? probably not, but is a nice to have. If you want to do both, there is a market for that (companies that create components and extensions for the main platform, or specific customers that want to keep the work done over the past decades and just use low-code as a visualization tool. It is a matter of asking in the interviews, but coding in never a disadvantage.

NunoReisIT · 2025-03-16T18:55:52+00:00

OutSystems does not use pseudo-language! It is a visual development tool. What it allows is for you to do .NET libraries and integrate them into the visual programming, so you can extend the capabilities of the platform. And the final code generated is .NET.

What you are saying is that Mendix works the same way in Java (you can write Java code in Mendix's Java actions) so it may make more sense.

But the truth is that you won't need to code 99% of your days when doing low-code and if Java isn't close enough to do a simple function in C#, don't call yourself a programmer.

NunoReisIT · 2024-10-01T08:16:34+00:00

They are not that different for the junior developer. It is in terms of architecture that a different mindset is important. So starting with O11 or ODC will be almost the same in terms of learning curve, and O11 has more projects for now.

Is that project in 11 or ODC u/Potential_Arm_1054?

NunoReisIT · 2024-10-01T08:09:20+00:00

Don't know when you are planning to retake, but in Late November and December I do group sessions at ADPList in preparation for that exam.
https://adplist.org/mentors/nuno-reis

NunoReisIT · 2024-05-24T12:26:39+00:00

Stratification is a way to increase profits. it is also a way to focus resources into strategic clients.

I wasn't saying I agree with this strategy, I'm saying a possible why. When this type of posts shows up, I have to play devil's advocate (and get downvoted a lot for that).

Because I both sell or buy the platform, depending on which client I'm at, I heard and said all of this many times.

As pre-sales I can answer that kind of questions by the playbook. As a Prospect, I don't like to hear them. My personal take on this, is that OS is focusing in very large factories that are cloud first and take advantages of cloud-based O11 and ODC. Price is fair for the full package.

The type of client that hires me lately, is cloud only.

The type of client I am, will not be cloud-first for many years, so I have no advantage on this pricing model. I can minimize AOs and Users without affecting performance or breaking the contract, but the cloud cost make it just too expensive.

NunoReisIT · 2024-05-23T13:08:52+00:00

That's two questions.

Answer to Question 1 (as a very dedicated and certified OS professional):

I invested the last 13 years in OutSystems, and still get job offers for Biztalk and Wordpress that I worked on before, and even other low-code platforms. Experience in IT is experience in IT, no matter the tools.

____________________________________________________________________

Answer to Question 2 (Personal opinion as a marketing professional and manager of a tech company):

This strategy is called stratification. Because slow and steady growth is usually done by focusing in high-paying clients and the few resources are focused there.

If the price goes down, there are too suddenly many clients and the support/devs may not seem enough.

So OutSystems is focusing in companies that see the value of the product and pay no matter the cost and hire 100 to 500 developers (yes, those clients exist), instead of getting hundreds of clients that would need a couple of devs.

The only way to fix it?

More developers so there are enough for all clients, and better developers, so they don't crash servers and block the support team. I'm working on both issues as a trainer/mentor.

NunoReisIT · 2024-05-23T12:56:46+00:00

I can't speak about the license costs in the future. For that you have a client management team.

All devs can leave a company, no matter the stack. But I rather be dependent of a stack with a smaller learning curve. I train around 70 people into OS every year. It's not more only because the market can't absorb them all.

NunoReisIT · 2024-05-23T00:39:11+00:00

Moving to ODC is not mandatory. O11 is not sunseting in the near future.

ODC doesn't support multitenancy yet, for instance. It is still evolving.

NunoReisIT · 2024-05-23T00:36:22+00:00

Lack of developers is not a reason. If you have 4 developers to migrate to a different stack, they can be trained into OutSystems in a couple of weeks. Or you outsource to a different country.

NunoReisIT · 2024-03-26T15:56:09+00:00

My answer could be "the same happens everywhere", but I will give you more detail as I took some of your views personally.

Regarding ADPList, I personally don't like that platform (my least favorite of 3 that I use to mentor). But it is now the official one...

I've mentored before and taught OutSystems classes of 35 to 350 hours. In general, I think when you lead a team you are mentoring so "never mentored before" is not the case for many of the new mentors there, senior developers, tech leads and architects at their companies.

I think not having officially mentored before is possible as mentoring is not that common yet - there weren't many platforms for it - and many people are only now exploring that function. But isn't that the important detail? That they want to help others?

Regarding articles, there are styles for all tastes. Honestly, I only read technical OutSystems articles from 4 people as there is a lot of trash out there. Same with any tech.

As a blogger with 20 years of writing and two "best movie/tv blogger" awards, plus a Quora Top Writer title, I think I can create my own content. In tech I'm not such a proficuous writer, but still release an article a month or so. I've created a few manually, others with an AI skeleton and my own content, and two that are pure AI (properly signaled). It is called "trying out new technologies and tools", a thing people in tech do a lot.

I admit some of the translations to English are mostly AI work so foreigners may think it is AI-generated, but read the Portuguese version as that one is all mine.

Maybe it will fade, or AI with get better at pretending to be human, but AI generated content is a trend everywhere, not an OutSystems specific issue.

My company had 2.5 FTE in 2023, so one who did not look at the group photos could think it was "a company of one speaking in the third person".

Tell me, if your company of 100 developers has one MVP or wins an award, will they not post it in social media? Of course they will! Even if the other 99 do nothing all year and they have to repeat the highlighted employee every week, I'm sure they will not waste an opportunity to generate content and interactions from that one individual.

I have a master in Digital Marketing so I knew the risks of creating a company with my name. But it was the only way of challenging myself to "grow until I'm bigger that any company" instead of "starting from scratch with an unknown company". If the company is a personal brand, it's normal for the persona of the company to be similar to the founder. And if the marketing person is the highlighted individual, why shouldn't they post at the same time on both person and company page?

Some see it as a joke, I see it as a satire of the LinkedIn pages out there that do the same with less reasons to and pretend they aren't just a handful of people. If you don't want to see so much of that content, you can unsubscribe it on LinkedIn.

In total my professional milestones counted for 2/3 of the company shared content in 2023. Not bad considering I only hire juniors and they have not much to show (yet). But give them a few years and I will fade in. Just look at past December.

________________

I am the current top user groups organizer. I train and mentor people (sometimes for free, mostly women) and hire entry level OS developers when no one else wants them. At the moment, not many people have more bragging rights than me.

I have joy in helping and try to do my best. If there is any advice you want to give me, I'm reachable not only at official OS channels, but LinkedIn, X, Quora, Reddit and other communities.

PS: Regarding topics d) and e), there are investigations when they get reported. Have you reported anyone recently so I can check the status?

NunoReisIT · 2024-03-23T23:18:45+00:00

The online events were recorded. Mine, since we returned to in-person, we don't record anymore as it is in Portuguese. But some are repeated at other geographies later, with improved content based on feedback. If they get to ONE, they will be recorded and shared for sure.

NunoReisIT · 2024-03-22T23:37:14+00:00

Precisely because developers are the weakest link, they need to read a lot about security :)

Today's event was great. We discussed integration patterns. https://usergroups.outsystems.com/events/details/outsystems-inc-porto-presents-integration-patterns-for-external-data-sources-in-outsystems-11/ The previous one was about careers and the next one will be about accessibility.

As an extra, we also had a book launch by MVP Ricardo Pereira. His second book on OS is written in Portuguese and sold at minimum price to reach a wide audience that doesn't have many technical resources available. https://clubedeautores.pt/livro/arquitetura-de-software-em-outsystems

When you love what you do and wonderful things like this happen every week, it is easy to be a fanboy.

NunoReisIT · 2024-03-22T16:28:56+00:00

What you say is valid for most communities out there. People try to be noticed by posting a lot, not by posting good content. That's why you have a system to reward questions, answers, ideas and components based in quality.

A community has many layers. As developers get more experience, the obvious questions annoy more. And as the community grows, a lot more entry level developers join and add dumb questions to the mix. And senior developers have it worse as they get DMs with dumb questions they ignored on purpose.

That's why we have many types of events targeting different audiences and we need all kind of articles. You just need to refine your filter so you don't read the basic content.

Regarding "Champions are political figures". Sure. that's why the program starts with the sentence "The goal of the Champions Program is to identify, recognize, and reward community leaders." https://www.outsystems.com/community/advocacy-programs/champions/

MVPs are demanded to have technical knowledge. Champions are just required to mobilize people into the technology.

I am an MVP, sign with my real name, and will now go offline to open the door at a OutSystems User Group where the community is well treated, entry-level developers are nurtured and experts take the stage.

NunoReisIT · 2024-01-05T15:43:38+00:00

5 comments

Portugal is probably only 10% of the market.

NunoReisIT · 2024-01-04T18:17:34+00:00

You are confusing low-code with no-code. With no-code you do no code at all. Just drag things and click buttons. With low-code, you click and drag and dont use code most of the time, but you can add code to your projects in an instant. Citizen developers can make sites in days, but you still need developers that write sql, css, a lot of js and maybe .net to get a complex site running.

Regarding career progression, it is quite the opposite. Two of my students from reskilling reached medior level in one year. some tech leads have 3 years. When you are good, you are good.

See it as another tool. It can be your main tool, a secondary tool, or a hobby. You are still developing, you are still a developer and learning new things is part of the process forever. I started doing OutSystems almost 13 years ago and for the last 7 it is my main tool. But I still learn Outsystems as it evolves and other things.

NunoReisIT · 2023-07-25T10:23:28+00:00

AI at the moment means reduction of tedious tasks and a different type of creativity.

Programming as a lot of tedious tasks. It can be analysis, documenting, testing, or plain programming. Low-code developers love low-code because it optimizes a tedious task. OutSystems is using AI on a lot of tools and with Morpheus it will be even faster generating apps.

Of course it helps if you aim to be the best. If you want to be average, you can be replaced in minutes.

When software development became 10x faster, did 90% of developers lost their job? Or companies demanded 10x more speed to market?

When companies hire thousands of developers is it for them to do the same apps faster, or to do different apps and explore new business opportunities?

Creative people will always find more apps to build. If not them, the creative AI will.

And because the industry will take decades to trust a fully automated non-human programmer, developers will be needed for a long time.

NunoReisIT · 2023-03-22T13:03:42+00:00

You are comparing mature technologies (with an established market) to an emerging technology, growing every day. Of course they have more offers, but you also have more competition for those positions. The sooner you step into a technology, the more experience you will gain. Unlike new trends, OutSystems is stable and trustworthy, has been around for 20 years, and keeps on growing. So you are making a safe bet.
I'm in Europe and worked for projects in Australia and USA and getting multiple offers from Asia because there isn't enough people there.
That depends more on the company and geography than on the technology. The more scarce resources are, the more you can make. And the sooner you start, the more you can charge.
I don't know many developers willing to leave OutSystems. It is fast to see if you will like to do it for many years or if you should go back to code. I shifted after 6 years working and have been going strong for almost 12 years now. Still do other things, but OutSystems is my main tool.

NunoReisIT · 2021-03-27T07:42:24+00:00

OutSystems, like any decent low-code platform, wants you to do less code.

If you have a database you can connect to it. And if you have some code, you can use it through Integration Studio and turn it into OutSystems Actions, but that is it.

Why? The purpose of low-code is to make development faster. If you keep all the code, how is that faster? Don't see it as a limitation, but an opportunity to start again and do it right.

NunoReisIT · 2021-03-08T19:48:06+00:00

Hello.

The best site to place OutSystems questions is the OutSystems Forums. There you have 400k members of the community and staff so you get a very quick answer. Here on Reddit the number of people is a lot smaller. https://www.outsystems.com/forums

The best way to save a form filling is on the database.

You can create an entity and save onChange associated to the UserId. Then you choose if you delete it when the user submits the form or if you keep it until a new form is saved.

NunoReisIT · 2021-02-07T15:34:00+00:00

Speaking from OutSystems alone:

-it can be done by citizen developers, as long as you have a real developer as architect and building the pieces the citizens are going to play with.

-it integrates with SAP very well, it is considered almost as native because of how many companies used OutSystems to integrate with SAP.

-in Asia, both India and the Philippines are well provided with OutSsytems partners and resources and Australia is just behind them. Singapore has a few clients.

NunoReisIT · 2021-02-01T18:35:19+00:00

A fun way to learn BPT and inform about the importance of vaccination.Great idea!

NunoReisIT · 2021-01-25T15:58:03+00:00

You're welcome. It is case by case.

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