ABAP in Eclipse Feature Explorer - Future looking bright

[naveenvishal]

I started my coding journey with languages like C++, ASP and Java back in good ol' college days. We used to test and explore the languages and along with them new IDEs in market making comparisons and using our preferred ones. At that time, Eclipse evolved as one of the hottest and unanimously, if I am not wrong, the best IDE supporting common languages like C++, Java, and others.

I also got chance to work on Eclipse when I used to code in PHP on my first job completing couple of turnkey projects. But that was just like introduction, as my journey with Eclipse was very short (4-5 months) and I got selected to work as an SAP ABAP Developer back in 2007(that too in my hometown, got lucky though).

Now again Eclipse has given me a chance to work on its platform including ABAP to its armory. It would be highly interesting to see how we all, as a whole, evolve on Eclipse.

Here are my sharing on completion of the ABAP in Eclipse tour.

Pros

1. Real time code validations and Syntax Error handling
2. Supporting same functions as we used to do with ABAP editor makes us more 'feel at home' like function call with signatures, code completion for inserting methods, and auto Syntax highlighting
3. It looks pretty easy to build tightly coupled applications involving other technologies like UI5 under single roof of Eclipse
4. Supports good features Inline declaration and table expressions
5. Nice to see advance features like finding and deleting unused variables automatically, and variables re-factoring being introduced

Cons

1. Connectivity and performance glitches,sometimes
2. Data Dictionary handling in missing. It Would be interesting to see, how differently and how much flexibility eclipse can provide to this core tool
3. Debugging features needs to be evolved

In my opinion ABAP in Eclipse is really evolving in a huge way. As a gradual shift we can move towards eclipse exploring and trusting the worthiness. It will surely be fruitful and easy for new developers to adapt the platform.

Last but not the least, I would like to thank thomasfiedler and the team for such brilliant work.

Best Regards,

Naveen Vishal