An SAP developer says AI writes in seconds the code checks teams usually skip. Fixing its errors takes him about an hour.
Paul Hardy writes ABAP, the programming language of SAP software, at Heidelberg Materials.
He told SAPinsider, in an interview ERP Today published on 21 October, that in his experience two jobs fall away first in SAP custom code. One is refactoring: tidying code without changing what it does. The other is automated unit tests, small checks that code does what it should.
Written by hand, he estimates, unit tests double development time, so managers tell developers not to write them. An AI tool proposes a full set in seconds. Hardy found syntax errors in them, "not too difficult to fix up", and puts the extra effort at about an hour.
"You can't take away a job that's not being done," he says. Vendors, in his account, present AI as a way to do without most programmers. His reply: "Nothing could be further from the truth."
His rule is that no code goes live until a human understands it. He presents the results on 19 November at Mastering SAP Collaborate in Sydney.
Both figures are his own estimates, not a study. For SAP teams, the arithmetic points at the backlog of custom code nobody had time to test.
Sources
Our file on SAP
- 30 Oct
SAP will add AI to its sovereign cloud in three countries, none of them Germany. SAP's German users want a date.
- 30 Oct
SAP plans three AI tools for early 2027 with no published price. One is a premium gateway for AI traffic.
- 29 Oct
SAP's four new AI assistants write test cases and fix custom code in live cloud migrations. Only early adopters can use them.
- 28 Oct
Bosch says 10 AI tools on SAP save it several million. Its full rollout of SAP's Joule waits for reliable answers.
- 27 Oct
SAP will stop giving away its AI agent builder after December. Its release note gives no price for the premium version.
Every story here is open to read. The ERP LEADERS brief goes one step further.
The day in enterprise software, in one email: the stories that matter, the failures with their figures, one case taken apart. Read a sample or sign up for the brief.
Welcome back. · Issue 01
26 comments on LinkedInRead the discussion
