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Why SharePoint development is so damn special!

By Bjorn Furuknap

January 12, 2011 — (Page 1 of 9)
Maybe you are an aspiring SharePoint developer who needs to understand what you’re going to face as a SharePoint developer. Or perhaps you’re a business user, a project manager for example, looking to understand where all your money goes. Or you may just be here for the free t-shirt, in which case you will be very disappointed.

SharePoint development is far from normal development. So, exactly what makes us SharePoint developers so special?

First, there’s the skills requirement. SharePoint developers need to master a range of skills so great, it will make quantum mechanics seem like Spelling 101.

Second, traditional development methods and experience will only get you a fraction of the way. Unit testing, for example, is useful only for the first few hundred lines of code, after which it becomes more of a burden than an asset.

Third, we are not the only developers of a solution. In fact, the better a solution we make, the more developers (whom we don’t know) will develop our solutions.

All in all, we are shooting at a moving target while wearing blindfolds, without knowing what the target looks like, where it is, or what type of ammo we need to use. In fact, we don’t even know if we’re in the right shooting range.

Skills requirement
SharePoint development is completely different than other forms of development in that it covers such a wide range of tiers and technologies. As a developer, you need to be proficient in the first tier of development, which mainly consists of customizing a solution through the Web interface, or out-of-the-box customization, as it is often called.

Then you need to understand the extensibility through the middle tier, in which you utilize scripting and markup languages such as jQuery, JavaScript, XML, XSL and so on, usually done through tools such as Microsoft’s SharePoint Designer.

Finally, you have the third tier of development where the programmers reside, and most of your work will be done using tools such as Visual Studio and Notepad. If the end result is a SharePoint solution file, or a .WSP that needs deployment documentation and someone versatile in PowerShell to deploy, chances are high that you’re doing third-tier development.

Related Search Term(s): SharePoint, .NET, XML, SQL Server

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Comments

07/29/2011 11:50:06 AM EST

I'm a business analyst. The SP developer I'm working with sent me this post. It is funny, and it also describes how I feel trying to help design business processes for SP. Do you know of any references for SP that are NOT for developers? I need to know what I need to learn about SP to help users define new/improved business processes. I need to understand what SP can and can't do at a level higher than actual development. I haven't found anything that describes the functionality and capabilities of SP without details about how to define web parts, integrate .NET, etc etc Thanks!

United StatesGinny

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Why SharePoint development is so damn special!

By Bjorn Furuknap

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