Natural fundamentals

New challenge: Software AG Natural/ADABAS

The start of the new week marks the start of a new chapter in my programming career. I was sent on a Software AG: Natural Programming Fundamentals course last week and it was a lot of fun to learn the basics of the language and how it integrates with the SOA environment.

I received a promotion to Analyst Programmer a month ago and with that comes new responsibilities. I must learn Natural/ADABAS programming to support the basic business needs and to further work on the ERP project we are busy with. I need to be ready to jump back and forth from PHP and Natural as I will be working in both for the foreseeable future.

I left for the Software AG offices in Bryanston last week and felt overwhelmed at the sheer scale of everything in the city, having grown up in rural South Africa I was like a fish out of water. It all was next level and a bit overwhelming but I was eager to get going learning the new language. I soon realized that Natural shares a lot of features with newer languages even though it is considered a legacy programming language.

I found that even though the course was structured as a basic programming fundamentals course I learned a lot by doing the exercises after each chapter we completed as it was based on real world examples.

Learn by doing, practice makes perfect.

The most important thing is that you learn by doing. I read all the course material but only felt real progress by coding and seeing the results first hand. Natural/ADABAS seems easy when reading the code but I still found that some concepts worked a little different than what I am used to in other programming languages.

It was interesting to see how the language evolved and I worked with the NaturalONE IDE that is based on Eclipse and it gives you the feeling that you are working with a modern language compared to working with it in the terminal. I am excited to get working in Natural/ADABAS as most of my current employer’s systems is based on the platform. I feel that I am up for the challenge and I am confident that I will be able to adapt to the nuances of Natural/ADABAS.

This is the next step in further developing and bettering myself, by keeping an open mind and learning from my seniors and colleagues I will be ready for the next step in my career…