Dear community, I’m currently working on queues. Computer scientists, as we all know, love algorithms and data structures – more on that in another blog. In any case, I had a quick chat with a typical AI about a simple ABAP example. My prompt looked something like this:
“I want you to act as a knowledgeable ABAP software development mentor, specifically teaching an ABAP junior developer. Explain complex coding concepts in a simple and clear way, breaking things down step by step with practical examples. Use analogies and practical advice to ensure understanding. Anticipate common mistakes and provide tips to avoid them. Today, let’s focus on explaining how a message queue in ABAP should be designed based on an example.“
The first part of the answer was the basic theory of a message queue. What is it, why should you use it, what does it consist of? That part was really well done. Short, but not too short to provide essential information.
Then came the part with the example. There was a CREATE TABLE statement here, which I didn’t even know from the Open/ABAP SQL standard. Oh well.
But that wasn’t the real surprise. What followed were function modules with some dubious content. Yes, you read that right. You want the AI to explain something to a junior developer like an experienced ABAP developer in a mentoring role, and you get function modules.
At my request, the AI then changed the function modules into a class with appropriate methods. Unfortunately, it wasn’t even pretty to look at. The example generated by the AI was ultimately a complete failure.
The practical tips on typical pitfalls and how to avoid them were really good.
That’s my experience with AI and ABAP on what is actually a common IT topic. The theory was well presented, but a simple practical ABAP example for illustration could perhaps have been achieved with a lot of prompt engineering. But a developer can also quickly build that themselves.
In general, I’ve had good experiences with AI for some commonplace topics. It provided a solid foundation that I could then expand upon. For specialized topics like ABAP, I think it’s also necessary to use highly specialized AI. Let’s see how Joule performs with a similar task next time.
Until the next non-AI-generated blog,
Yours, Michael