As product manager for ABAP I often had to explain the capabilities of ABAP to groups of developers used to other development languages and environments. While ABAP is an extremely productive environment for large scale business applications, it has - face it - also its strange sides. Sometimes I had a hard time to explain why a special clumsy looking element in its syntax is in fact a powerful concept born out of the need to fullfill tasks whithout some of the largest companies in the world could not run their businesses. Often I struggled to find an analogy like "tools for professional carpenters usually don't look as sexy as those made for do-it-yourselfers but are much more powerful". Pretty lame, right? But now I read in SDN member Martin Ceronio's own blog series: Why I like ABAP an analogy I really like:
"Not only that, but the ABAP language is made to deal with business data like a shark is made to hunt prey."
Read and enjoy Martinn's excellent blog at martinceronio.net
