Should I prefer learning ABAP OO over ABAP Procedural programming?

[former_member1842]

Should I learn ABAP OO and ignore ABAP Procedural programming?

How relevant is ABAP Procedural for the future of a beginner?

Please help.

Thanks

[SimoneMilesi]

Procedural and OO are detached by the language, apart a few syntax commands you should know.

I always suggest to learn BOTH because OOP is the present and the near future, Procedural is the past you'll have to face sooner or later.

[matt]

Agreed. But focus on ABAP Objects, unless you want your code to look like it was written 25 years ago.

[SimoneMilesi]

matthew.billingham (mentioning sucks!) sure, but i also discovered people unable to read old standard report and debug because they were used to rely on OOP paradigms and, once forced by work to "downgrade" their skills, they find it "disturbing".

OOP is a must, but there are cases where it's just an overstructure you can avoid.

P.S.

i'm speaking as thumb rule, not for ABAP or SAP itself 🙂

[matt]

I'd love to find someone who doesn't understand procedural ABAP. I encounter every day people who don't understand ABAP Objects - even though it's been around for nearly 20 years now!

[SimoneMilesi]

As i said, it was more a general concept: i know people using .NET language in a wonderful way struggling when they have to read and fix some old application written in VBA (and, believe me, a lot of customers still have VBA stuff around and follow the rule "it works, do not touch it" ) due the change of paradigm

[raphael_almeida]

Agree too. In my view, starting with procedural is a little "back to stone age" (paraphrasing what matthew.billingham said). OOP is a good to start, but I would not focus only on that. My point of view for developing in present days is learn about "new" technologies (e.g.: cloud functions, functional programming).

[former_member1842]

Thank you Sir

I am new and started learning recently, could you please give me some pointers on how to learn and get better at ABAP programming.

[pokrakam]

simone.milesi - re. "...people unable to read old standard report and debug because they were used to rely on OOP paradigms and, once forced by work to "downgrade" their skills, they find it "disturbing"".

You say that as if it's a bad thing? I can't tell you how much I wish for more people to come to that conclusion!

More likely to find people muttering "I find your lack of faith in the FORMs disturbing", or, "I sense a disturbance in the FORM" 🙂

[keremkoseoglu]

Procedural to understand & maintain legacy code, OO to develop new things.

[loyd_enochs3]

No one is going to re-write SAPMV45A or any of it's cousins into "pure" OO code (whatever that might be), so you will need to know both in order to debug and update existing SAP Standard code.

Not to mention all the custom development you will encounter along the way.

[former_member1842]

Thank you Sir

Could you please elaborate on the Custom Development part?

I am new and started learning recently, also if you could give me some pointers on how to learn and get better at ABAP programming.