Total Eclipse of The Heart

Even though I still indulge in an occasional trip to SAP GUI, most of ABAP development these days is happening in other IDEs, such as Eclipse.

Switching to the new IDE can feel like a confused Travolta meme. When we use something for a while, we create our own pathways, workflows, and take time to learn helpful tools and shortcuts. With new IDE, all of those little productivity boosts seem lost. It doesn’t have to be that way.

When moving from SE80 to ABAP Development Tools (ADT) in Eclipse, this FAQ document was very helpful to me. And most recently, I’ve discovered that even more tools, add-ons, gadgets and gizmos are available on Eclipse Marketplace. For example, these clipboard tools can help to keep track of several recently copy-pasted values. This is very helpful when running test with specific key values, for example. And with more general, non-SAP tips from the websites like Eclipse Can Do That you will be using Eclipse like a boss!