Ahoy there,
I'm Edgar Soares, a SAP Logistics consultant with over 10 years of ABAP experience and this is my take in Eclipse's Feature Explorer!
I had my first contact with eclipse many years ago, remarkably used it to program in Java for a SAP CRM Internet Pricing Configurator engine. We needed to replicate some formulas in it! Great tool, loved it since. Later on I tried it with ABAP a while back as soon as I find out it was available. I had liked the idea but struggled with the loss of features.
Along came Feature Explorer, great tool, happy to use it, learned a lot about how to find those great things we all love in ABAP repository. You see, when you're a seasoned programmer it's not that easy to get out of our way to learn a new tool particularly if it doesn't add peaces of functionality to the language itself. So if you ask me if this tool is helpful for developers I'd had to say is useful to experienced developers also who don't want to send too much time understanding how the tool works.
I think the way feature explorer was designed it could be easily expanded to other areas and tools of the community. I think an initial hands-on tutorial would allow a far more effective knowledge sharing. My favorite feature, I have to say, is that it is fun!
Now the main thing that attracts me to using Eclipse for ABAP is it's offline capability. Ever so often we need to establish a connection to a remote system in a poor wireless network or while traveling by train and unless you're very patient you won't have a good experience. The graphical environment is also very appealing for someone used to program in other technologies because you can use for projects in ABAP, WD Java, SAP UI5, Java, Javascript, all useful in SAP world and 20 languages more.
Oh, and you have to love the Outline point and click :smile: .
So get your hands on Eclipse's Feature Explorer, Become an ABAP in Eclipse Feature Explorer and earn the Explorer Badge!
Finally a shout out to eladio.soares and altino.dasilva2. Come here and smell the coffee!
