Something must be done

 After 25 years working on Abap code it’s got to be said: oh boy! is there a bunch of abysmal code out there.

There’s a lazy coder’s website and tik tok feed which is all very funny but also tragically close to reality. I can’t believe the average abapper gets paid as much as he/she does when de average quality of code I’ve come across is atrocious. Wouldn’t it be fair to tie code quality to wages? Well I think it’s the only way to stop abappers from being as sloppy and unprofessional as they are being today.

I’m obviously not out on a charm offensive with my peers. I’ve had to deal with so much garbage I cannot keep quiet any longer. Something must be done.

My current thinking is that we need to give IT managers, PM’s, testers, team leads, etc… a means to rate the ABAP code that they are handed, and provide feedback to the developer and even reject code that simply doesn’t live up to certain standards. I also think the abapper needs a place where he/she can skill up to raise the quality of the work.

So we need a place to upload code objects and perform quality inspection. The inspection must be based on a set of intelligent rules. So we need those rules.

Obviously I’m aware of the standard tools and whilst I can see the merit in using them and following the guidelines they provide, they are hugely insufficient in my opinion.