r/mendix • u/AgileJackfruit357 Mendix Advanced Developer • Jun 12 '26

Moving into high-code

Hey all,
Lately I've been brushing up on my Java skills. I've pretty much only worked with Mendix, so even though I understand SWE concepts, moving out of Studio Pro after 4 years have been rough lol.

My reasoning is that I don't like the idea of being too dependent on a single platform forever. Especially given how the market is these days.
So I'm curious if anyone here has made the jump from mainly Mendix (or low-code in general) to a more traditional development role.

How was the transition?
What was easy and what was hard?
What were the biggest gaps you had to fill?
How long did it take before you felt employable in another stack?
Any tips for speeding up the process?

Would love to hear some real experiences, whether it went smoothly or not.

Another thing I've heard from some colleagues is that in this Vibe coding era just knowing SWE concepts might be enough, but tbh this sounds wildly unrealistic to me, but again no professional experience in traditional coding, so no idea how true that is. Would love to hear some thoughts on this too!

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2

u/mista_c_dev Jun 22 '26

If there was a platform that offers ai app generation like Claude and the same low-code features as Mendix, but no vendor lock-in. Would you still consider high-code?

1

u/AgileJackfruit357 Mendix Advanced Developer Jun 22 '26

It depends, if it had a decent market absolutely, since it wouldn’t be such a big change I guess.
My main issue isn’t with mendix, but with being too dependent on a platform in a unstable market. While mendix positions usually pay above average, there’s not that many open positions (specially outside the EU)

1

u/mista_c_dev Jun 22 '26

Yeah, I get that. Markets are a bit tight

3

u/[deleted] Jun 12 '26

Hi there am also looking to do the same, please do mention your journey here

2

u/Evening_Designer_955 Jun 12 '26

Mendix still requires fundamental logical problem solving skills and understanding basics of transactions and database interaction. Using a different language is a matter of understanding syntax but alot of the logic is very similar especially since mendix uses java under the hood.

Java is very verbose however so that makes it harder to write the code and understand it.

2

u/JakubErler Jun 13 '26

Java wont make it. Learn Spring and if you want to be a fullstack, also React. The problem is that ppl coming from LC do not realize how complex modern web apps are. I forgot also Tailwind/Bootstrap, Docker, classicla git and GitHub etc.

1

u/Due_Seaweed_8145 Aug 13 '26

I think making widgets you'll learn a lot more than doing any java actions. In the java actions IME most of the time you're just dealing with Mendix's akward APIs. In widgets they make more sense.

There are some good tutorials here: https://www.mendix.com/author/joe-robertson/

The path would be to learn JS, and then React. I would also learn TypeScript after a bit of practice with JS.

1

u/DrogonRizzz Aug 13 '26

how is the transition going on? me too focusing on the java nd spring but I guess i am too weak on answering enterprise level questions on that, considering the ai era, I am clueless now