How I learned ABAP and WHY you should know about that?

This reminds me my own story, when I was coding my first paid software ever, back in age of my college studies.

It was already more 10 years ago, in my dormitory room. The sun was shining and summer was already coming. I was wearing my old college T-shirt and I was sitting on the chair in front of my CRT monitor and PC running old good Windows XP, with installed SAP GUI, which was connected to a company network, where I was programming the software.

(on that picture I’m coding something else, but, this is basically how it looked like ;)) ->

I remember it like it was today. I was sitting there and I was totally lost and depressed, because I was not able to move forward, even though I knew all the syntax and principles from the training, I took few weeks ago. I did not know what I was going to do. Anything I tried, didn’t work, even Google was not helping. I knew I had to do something, but didn’t know exactly what. And that\'s how I literally wasted days of my time.

Then I decided to call the guy from company, where I was taking ABAP classes and scheduled one-on-one meeting with him. I started to ask questions and did not let him go, until I really understood. And that was totally something new for me, because I was not thought for many years at school to ask questions and clarify the knowledge (well, it may sound silly for you, but it was like that).

Long story short, I was used to do all the work by myself, just me and my trusty computer day after day. When I started to work in a job, I had the exact same attitude. I just put my head down and started to do everything all by myself without thinking for asking any help. And it\'s not that big disaster. I was able to move forward, but very slowly.

And today, when I work on any project, I make sure that I always have some expert on reach. And this is my procedure: when I get stuck, I take max. 15 minutes trying find the solution by myself, if it does not work I take another 15 minutes by googling for the solution. And when I don’t get the solution in half an hour, I ask somebody who has got great skills and can lead me to right direction in few minutes.

All in all, being a senior developer does not make you only from mastering ABAP syntax, creating own algorithms, or even creating software architecture all by yourself, but you should work on your personality as well and master your soft skills such as communication is.

How to build ABAP development skills 
- the right way

Based on my development and mentoring skills, I have designed materials, which are split into single steps and lead ABAP newbies to help them become independent ABAP developers, by helping them avoid learning ‘The Nightmare Way’, but focusing on one single important topic at a time, based on their level.

How Conventional Way of Learning of ABAP Works?

What people usually do when they want to learn ABAP programming on their own, is that they either

1. take their time and patiently search for information and learn by themselves
2. they invest some money to learn it much faster

Here are the options that you have as well:

• read BOOKS, BLOG ARTICLES, ..: depending on what source of information you get, but in general, it is the longest way how to learn ABAP.
• watch practical YouTube VIDEOS: it is much better, because you see actual programming on the fly, but still, you will spend too much time watching such videos and you can end up being messed up, just because, many times YT channels do not have their instructional videos structured in the way, to lead ABAP programmers from their current level to to some reasonable end
• take regular ONLINE TRAINING: this is even better, because you get
  • structured video tutorials (+ many times with additional learning materials)
  • sometimes you get access to some forum where you can ask questions
  • you see examples of how instructor implements project right in front of your eyes

But you know what? For most people, none of that works really well! What do I mean by that?

How newbies gain skills? (and how I was helping them)

One of the big parts of my daily work was to mentor new people coming to company or to specific projects and instructing them to become a valuable part of our development team in as short time as possible. They had to go through our internal “onboarding online training” with practical examples.

Guess what happened, when they had to implement their very first project. Many of them struggled. They did not know how to apply some learned concepts into their project.

Why is that? All of them had the same source of information, all of them took their time and they learned it in their own speed. Shouldn\'t all of them be on the same level?

Well the answer is quite simple: NO! This is general process of learning new things. And programming in ABAP is not the exception.

Here is the explanation: Research done by educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom, published by American Educational Research Association, proved that the most efficient

teaching method is using one-on-one approach, rather than conventional instructional methods (for more information read the whole study here).

And this is the reason why ABAP Academy decided to offer one-on-one mentoring approach in all their trainings and we spend hours by consulting your issues, so that you can shorten your learning time as much as possible compared to conventional learning approach.

Personally, such approach helped me to boost my own skills to senior level programming approach. 

Introducing ABAP Academy Advanced Training Program

That\'s why I\'ve put together a step-by-step system to help you overcome each of these obstacles and ensure that you reach your goal of becoming independent ABAP developer* by June 30th, 2018.

* Notice: Independent ABAP Developer in certain level. You should be aware that you will have to learn during your whole ABAP career, to become better and better. Learning never stops in this area. However, it is possible to set your base skills (hard and soft skills) in the way that you will be able to work independently as much as possible.

ABAP Academy Advanced Training Program isn\'t just a training. It\'s a master class and coaching system designed to take you by the hand and teach you the principles and strategies needed to build a powerful ABAP skills that will open up you doors to become professional ABAP developer.

ABAP Academy is the professional online ABAP training platform, designed and reviewed by skilled SAP/ABAP experts with real life project implementation know-how. 

And to provide you accountability and support system you need:

• Easy-to-follow lessons
• Supportive community of ABAP students 
• Built-in accountability
• Personal mentoring with ABAP Academy Team

What will you learn in this training program?

This training covers three primary topics:

Getting to independent development level sounds … big! Especially when you are just starting out, it sounds like an impossible large goal. 

In the ABAP Academy Advanced Training Program, you’ll learn systematically and incrementally build your hard skills along with soft skills. Each lecture will lead you toward that goal.

But (and here is the important part), me teaching you a bunch of theory and strategies won’t help you.

The key to reaching your goal is following a proven framework.

The ABAP Academy Advanced Training Program isn\'t just a collection of a bunch of technical lessons: it gives you the framework and sequencing of when you need to implement each programming principles to give you as fluent understanding of ABAP as possible.

Quick example ..

Internal tables. Everyone says you need to use them. And you do!

But you DON’T want to even think about internal tables until you understand fundamentals in ABAP. Why? Because most probably you will use them without truly understanding its big purpose and true value that brings to your implementations.
Most probably you would just start mixing internal tables with header lines, without headerlines, work areas, .. until you would start wondering, why are those things in there and when should I use them?

That’s why the training program is broken into 3 major phases. Each milestone has a list of technical skills you want to learn to truly understand each concept used within ABAP programs.

Your job is to execute these lessons in order. (No internal tables until you’re ready).

Here is what the big picture of the training program looks like:

One of the big problems is that even this area can get pretty overwhelming when realizing on what to focus first and how effectively learn those soft skills along with hard skills.

• Should I focus on thinking as developer first?
• Or rather build communication skills to really understand customer needs?
• Should I even bother with thinking as team player? I guess I have time for developing this one, right? 
• And what about my own talents? 
• ...

And this is not the end of the list of what companies are looking for.

There are so many options. What a PAIN! Good news for you is that with this training program you can avoid all of that.

I\'m going to give you implementation projects, where you will train yourself and learn to build your soft skills naturally along the learning journey. You will go through my exact suggestions that I used for other my students. No spending months to realize, what is good for you to boost your learning process. 

As a ABAP Academy student, you\'ll have access to those projects where you will learn those important and very overlooked skills as well.

Here are technical topics (hard skills) that are covered in this training program.

Throughout the whole training you will learn how to code, while you will watch me implementing projects.

Throughout the training you will implement several milestone projects:

• Initial Fundamental Skills in ABAP
• Analyzing and Digging Inside of ABAP Programs, using Debugger 
• Car Store Database Setup Project 
• Customer Interaction Project
• Performance Optimization Project on Hundreds of Thousands of Records in Database
• Dynamic database table project 
• .. and much more 

At the end of the training, you will implement final project called NSA blacklist (this is the project based on my first paid software in ABAP ever) 

Here you will learn and practice exact steps for successful project implementation from getting specification to your hand, all the way through design, implementation, testing and shipping to customer.

.. and what about Enhancements, BADIs, SAP Scripts, Smartforms, BAPIs, BDC, ... ?

Good question. But asking too soon.

To build very strong base as ABAP developer with real development skills, independent thinking as developer, right programming habits, valued communication skills + behaving and developing as real team player, you need to master firstly hard skills which you will learn in this training program.

These programming skills are very important in any real project implementation. 

Once you will master them, then you can focus on building other hard skills using different technologies within SAP. 

In all the technologies like Enhancements, Smartforms, BDCs, ... you will use ABAP as a programming language. If you will already have mastered ABAP, you will be easily able to jump and understand other topics, closely related to ABAP as well. 

As always, you want to focus on one important step at a time. 

And in this situation, it is building strong ABAP base (hard skills + soft skills), so that later you can continue with additional learning of development technologies within SAP environment.

And the best part, you will be able to do it all by yourself from your home!

10+1 Bonuses That Will Help You Learn Faster

That’s not all. You will also get access to the following resources in this training as well:

• Access to the community of advanced students - ! You are not going to be alone in this ! You will have access to community of students, who will deal with the same issues and challenges as you.
• Access to database of Code Review Sessions with ABAP expert after completing specific milestone modules
• Access to Soft Skills Training Materials on how to move your development skills to the next level 
  • Communication with Customer
  • How to make sure that you understand what your customer wants from you in detail
  • How to make sure that your customer knows what you are doing in detail
  • How to keep yourself out of stress situations as much as possible in projects
  • Software Testing Principles

• Exact email scripts and principles that will help you avoid stress situations on projects

• Materials ready to copy and paste with Performance Optimization Tips and Tricks

• Materials ready to copy and paste Readability Optimization Tips and Tricks

• Downloadable and printable materials with Programming Guidelines that will help you to code efficiently on every project

• Downloadable and printable materials with Naming conventions

• Downloadable and printable checklist containing steps for successful project implementation

• Downloadable and printable list of all transactions needed for ABAP developer

• Downloadable and printable cheat sheet with all the basic ABAP statements, every ABAP programmer should know

• Know-how and Tools which will help you make your effort estimations much more precise

Notice: some of the resources will be available only after refund period

Access to Pilot Bonus Resources

If you are from Slovakia or Czech republic, you will also get access to our brand new bonus resources:

• Active preparation for ABAP job interview
• Possible Job Offers After Successful Graduation from the Training
• One month support during onboarding phase at your first job

But don’t just take my word for it ..

Here is what actual students are saying about this training program.

And notice that there are both groups:

• total newbies to ABAP programming (which for some of them it “boosted their way for getting to ABAP development” and got them their first ABAP junior job position)
• ABAP-ers with working experiences

How much does it cost?

Many people believe they have to get lucky or just to learn hard skills to grow their career in order to get into ABAP or grow their existing skills. 

Instead, I\'ve discovered that building hard skills along with soft skills is the key to making sustainable growth in your programming career.

If you are self learner who keeps searching for building skills on all kinds of places online, and you\'re ready to quit wasting your time by figuring things out all by yourself, this training is for you.

I was just like you. 

.. and this is the system that in one point of my career, finally enabled me to break the cycle and become valuable member of my development team and even technical leader to one of my employer\'s products.

You have two options:

Option #1: Keep doing what you’ve been doing (and be frustrated and annoyed with the results)

Option #2: Join ABAP Academy Advanced Training Program and let me help you to achieve your goals by becoming ABAP developer …

To prove to yourself that you CAN do it.
To work in the area you want to work in.
To pay off your debt.
To start a family.

What\'s your WHY?

The entire ABAP Academy Advanced Training – all the materials, program outlines, project specifications, materials based on real life projects – are broken into modules, to make sure that you don’t get overwhelmed and can easily and methodically grow your programming skills.

Anyone who will purchase it right now, gets access to the training with all mentioned bonuses restricted to max. 10 students.

30-Day ABAP Academy Unconditional Money Back Guarantee

The training is backed by a 30-Day 100% ABAP Academy Unconditional Money-Back Guarantee, you can get yourself a seat to the training... and go through the materials entirely RISK-FREE...

I take the risk on my shoulders. In other words, don\'t decide if the training is right for you today... Instead, you can get access to the training program, ... go through the materials, and if you decide you like what you see... then keep it.

If it\'s not what you expected or doesn\'t work for you, I would not feel right keeping your money. In such case, just send me an email to ladislav.rydzyk@abapacademy.com for a full refund. I may ask you few questions in order to improve the training quality, but there will be no runaround.

And just to be clear, there are absolutely no strings attached, no forms to fill out, nothing to prove, ...  . No hassles or headaches... and we\'ll still remain friends, I promise :-)

Note: Money back guarantee counts from the day, after you will receive access to learning materials.

Are there any restrictions?

There are only 10 seats available for both Licenses in total. Whenever all the seats will be taken, the offer will be taken off.

Now it’s your turn. Just give me your time and I will help you get into senior level ABAP development approach on how to create ABAP software.

DO NOT buy this if you are looking for another \"ABAP in 10 Days\" training!

This training program requires serious work to make from you solid and valuable ABAP-er.

If you are just hunting around for another website or training videos where you can pick up \"programming wisdom\" just by watching without any effort, then you will HATE this training program.

DON\'T BUY IT.

But if you are tired of not making substantial progress with your ABAP development skills, and you are ready to follow a proven system to fix that, you\'ll really like this training.

If you always wanted structured materials, proven learning methodology that leads you to your goal, an accountability system, a professional mentor who can unstuck you from your problems, so that you can rapidly progress forward, you will love this training.

It is exactly what I wish I had when I started out.

And this is exactly what one of my students (10+ years experienced ABAP developer Vladimir Velickovic) wish he had the same:

Are you ready to to grow your ABAP skills?

There are two packages you can choose from:

The PRO package includes the full training program, access to the support community, special 3-months access to our Incubator Program. 

The MASTER SKILLS package includes the full training program and ALL of the bonus items mentioned above (including 6-months unlimited mentoring).