The enormous success of the OutSystems Platform brought with it the demand for professionals that can master the platform’s application development environment. The ability to create algorithms that solve computational problems is one of the most critical skills of software development. Developers must excel in putting together effective and efficient flows, being also mindful of the elegance of their solutions.

Training people from different academic backgrounds to be successful in this challenging world needs to be a structured and highly detailed procedure – starting from the foundations. The training activities must allow the trainee to develop vivid mental images of the basic concepts utilized in computational problem-solving.

Demonstrating a variety of control of the flow combinations in step-by-step working examples, is the key to lay rock-solid foundations for the developers’ professional fulfillment. These demonstrations are most effective when they integrate verbal and visual coding. It’s the alliance between these two that has proven to have the best cognitive results – generating the most powerful mental images.

Verbal code

When we talk about visual coding, the Outsystems Service Studio is the perfect tool – adding incredible value to the developer’s training. Using the action flow, and the debugging functionality, we can provide the ideal conditions to make visual coding a fertile ground for the flourishing of valuable mental models.

Visual code: ad-hoc loop

While the visual code above matches exactly the verbal code example, it is not the most elegant and straightforward solution. Moving on, we finally unveil the solution using the For Each functionality and close the loop on our demonstration.

Visual code: For Each loop

After all, it’s this dynamic and adaptive experience that fosters the path to “mastering the flow”! At ITUp, it is this approach that allows people from different backgrounds to start their journey towards becoming “Jedis of the Action Flow”!

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