Navigating the AI Development Landscape: SAP Build Code & Joule vs GitHub Copilot

This is a 3^rd part conclusion / summarisation post where I compare these two technologies head to head: SAP Build Code & Joule vs GitHub Copilot. In case you missed part 1 and 2 of this blog series, I have linked to them here for ease of reference:

Journey of SAP Build Code and Joule
It’s Time for GitHub Copilot to Meet SAP

When I began this exploration into AI development tools, I wasn’t expecting much from either tool. Being honest, I’m skeptical about AI code generation taking over the development world. However, after using both, I see that they each have a place in the developer’s toolkit. But which one was best? Well not sure this is a fair question anymore as these are inherintly different approaches to AI code generation. Let’s understand why!

SAP Build Code & Joule

SAP Build Code is Business Application Studio with training wheels and AI Joule intermixed to accelarate a development project with some scafolding and best-practice code. Yes, end-to-end boilerplating is hugely benefitial and the overall SAP ecosystem awareness definetly helps, especially if you are new in this space. However, with fusion development, I doubt a true “citizen developer” would find it easy to use. The main advantage, as I see it, with all these graphical views is that it becomes a lot easier to visually showcase your code without showing, well code. Would I trust someone to start adding fields using the graphical editor without understanding the code? A definitive No!

SAP Joule was good when it could do something, but right now, it can only jump in for very specific tasks. Generated code often ‘seemed’ correct but upon closer inspection (or during runtime) the gaps in the logic become evident. In short, don’t trust generated code and always double check. As a final comment, I would love to see Joule as more of an interactive assistant jumping in when it knows it can add value; a bit more like copilot

GitHub Copilot

GitHub Copilot, for an SAP CAP project, is best summed as auto-complete on stereoids. I loved having the assistant always available on my left tab (or inline) that I could chat with, however I did feel it needed some work; it was too quick trying to give me code when I was just asking a simple question. While coding, here is where GitHub copilot shines, understanding what you are trying to do and suggesting the next line or just completing all the code for you. Yes it is not always correct and hence why it is important to always vet the generated code but for the most part, it saved me time writing tedious or repetetive code.

Specifically relating to SAP knowledge, GitHub copilot still has a lot to learn. Part of the problem is not using the most current information and from SAP official sources. Especially with SAP CAP, new major features are introduced every couple of months and rendering “old-ways” effectively obsolete. Having said that, I trust it is just a matter of time for the AI to catch-up to up-to-date information and hopefully be more domain (SAP) aware.

In summary

So can you compare it to Build Code and Joule? Well not really. SAP Build Code is a full IDE more comparable to vs.code with co-pilot intergated. And Joule at this point is only available for specific cases unlike co-pilot that is always looking and trying to assist. Specifically Build Code for me is an overkil in trying to make everything graphical and automate; a joy when it works and a pain when it doesn’t. Personally I prefer local vs.code development as I have better control over my projects and I often dable in other coding tasks outside of the SAP realm.

Looking specifically at Joule vs Copilot; well Joule is much better at SAP code generation, I wouldn’t expect anything less but I also really enjoyed how copilot just jumped into my code and tried to help. Both AI’s code-generation made mistakes, so again always double-check generated code. Overall, however, I believe they mostly benefited and accelarated my coding tasks. Both these AIs could learn from each other so I hope to see some more Joule in co-pilot and visa-versa in the near future.

I hope this blog and comparison helps shed some light on these tools and allows you to choose the right one for you. In the meantime, I’m eager to see how these tools develop, as well as explore other code-gen tools in the future.