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 the most relevant solutions 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 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 new ABAP programmers from the beginning to some reasonable end
• take regular ONLINE TRAINING: this is even better, because you get
  • structured video tutorials (+ many times with additional learning materials)
  • most often 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! Even online trainings! How do I know 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: 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 (even in free StarterKit training) 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

ABAP Academy is the first professional online ABAP training platform, designed from actual implementation know-how, which opens you well paid job opportunities in low competition area, by providing practical learning materials based on real life projects and personal mentoring from ABAP expert.

This course covers following main topics:

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

10+1 Bonuses You’ll Get in this Course

That’s not all. You will also get the following bonus items as well:

• Access to 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 will be.

• Q&A sessions included with ABAP expert

• One on one code review sessions after implementation of final project

• 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

How much does it cost?

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 it for special pre-order price limited for 15 students.

Note: ABAP Academy Advanced Training is currently being pre-sold for a reduced price and will be released in May 2017.

30-Day Unconditional Money Back Guarantee

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

In other words, don\'t decide if the training is right for you today... Instead, get yourself a copy... 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, 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, when you will receive access to learning materials. So in your case, when the training will start on May 2017, you can ask for the refund all from the time of you paid your money, until June 2017.

When does this special offer end?

There are only 15 seats available for pre-order price. Whenever all the seats will be taken, special offer will be taken off and the training will be available for the full price.

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