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cyclingfisch_
Active Contributor

I want to share my personal geek dilemma with you. And I guess there are a number of geeks in the community who are in the same dilemma. So I’m really interested in your comments!

I started in to work in the area of SAP in 2001 in an FI/CO implementation project. Already at that time I spent a lot of my free time with computer stuff. Then I did my studies and during my studies I realized, that developing software is the thing I wanted to after my studies. The main reason is, that I just like to think how I can solve a problem, start to code and work on the solution till it works. It’s just cool to see that it works in the end. That’s the reason why I still love to code!

I call myself a kind of a geek, because I’m still interested in almost all that gadget, IT, programming and technology stuff around. I’m one of those hopefully not grey-haired ABAP developers (btw. #ABAPisNotDead ;-)). Even in the ABAP world are a lot of cool new things which need to be discovered: CDS views, BOPF, S/4 HANA programming model, ABAP Push Channels just to name a few. Of course, there are not many projects around were you only use the latest cutting edge technology and for sure no project will use all the new features. So to get into those new topics you need to invest some time. As I’m still a geek, I don’t mind to do this. But beside the new ABAP stuff there is already in the SAP eco system so many new stuff which I would like to try and learn that I’m not able to do all of it. And additionally there is a lot of cool geek stuff outside the SAP eco system.

Books, magazines and devices which I want to read and try out 🙂

In my case this leads to a long imaginary to-do list which I will never manage to finish because there always more things added then finished. This to-do list only exists in my hand and therefore it changes on a regular base. There are a lot of books and IT magazines to read on my night table and some devices for IoT stuff on my desk at home. Somehow this is disappointing for me, but I admit to myself that it is just unrealistic to think I will ever finish all of it.

But anyway, I have something like a strategy to get into the topics with the highest priority:

  • First of all: for me it is important to have a focus area, otherwise you might get lost and you are likely to become a jack of all trades. For me that’s still ABAP, even if this might chance one day. All the other stuff is “nice to know”, but it also is important to improve my skills.
  • As I call myself a community guy, I also try to attend community events like SAP CodeJams, SAP Inside Tracks, SAP Stammtisch Meetings (meet ups) and others. For me it’s just more fun to learn from other people, get inspired from different ideas and discuss with other developers
  • Answering questions on SCN also helps to get deeper into topic. Because you also have to do some investigation in order to proof your first guess was right. But this rather helps to get deeper into a topic where you have already some experience.
  • Sometimes it also helps to put some pressure on myself by proposing a talk about a new topic for a SAP Inside Track or our internal developer’s convention
  • And last but not least, I sometimes start some private development projects using new technologies or programming languages. In this case I try to gain the knowledge by reading books, online tutorials and online courses like openSAP offers them

What about you? How do you do your personal knowledge management? Are you in the same dilemma?

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