Does SharePoint suck? No way!!, but with a client today, I got that comment from one of their developers.

I’ve heard that comment too many times, and every time I hear it I laugh way too much; mainly because it reminds me when I hated SharePoint too, yes I also thought that SharePoint sucked, but that was when I first started to work with it, long long time ago…

If you think about it, every time more and more companies are implementing SharePoint, why? because the business people see a value in it, they see what SharePoint can do to improve their businesses and operations.

Having more SharePoint implementations, requires more people working in SharePoint projects, and let’s be honest not too many people are really “SharePoint developers or experts”, most of the people working in SharePoint are .NET developers.

Which brings me to the question: who is usually the people complaining about SharePoint and saying that SharePoint sucks? the answer: the developers.

Interesting, why does this happen?, well it’s easy. SharePoint is based in .NET, and for many people is easy to think that if you know .NET then SharePoint will be easy for you.

The thing is, if you know SharePoint, then you know .NET; but if you know .NET it does not mean that you know SharePoint, yes it is an advantage, because it means you know the basics, but there is still a learning curve.

Usually developers are thrown into SharePoint projects just because they know .NET, without a previous training/knowledge of SharePoint. It means they will learn SharePoint on the road, and that learning curve can be painful (ask me! lol). It is usually because of the lack of knowledge in SharePoint that people say SharePoint sucks, because we wan to do things the way we are used to in .NET, and things that can be done in 5 min in .NET, take hours in SharePoint, so we get frustrated.Let’s not forget that SharePoint is a platform, it has its own way to work.

Now I’m not saying that doing a project in SharePoint is better than doing it in ASP.NET for example, or than doing it in ASP.NET is better than doing it in SharePoint, It just depends on the project, there will be projects where it is better to do it in SharePoint and other where it is not, SharePoint Architects play a key roll in here.

This, also brings a person to say that SharePoint sucks, when the sales people sale a project in SharePoint (because they just want to sale) without analyzing if it is convenient or not to do it in SharePoint, it will become frustrating for the developers to meet some requirements.  At the end the developers will be the ones working on the project that was not suitable for SharePoint and they will end hating SharePoint.

In conclusion, SharePoint is a very robust platform, and you have to know its architecture and go through that learning curve in order for you to be able to work in a SharePoint project and not get frustrated in the way.

After a couple of projects working with SharePoint, you’ll understand more and more about it, and I’m sure you’ll like it, and probably you’ll even love it! just like I love SharePoint.

Love not hate people!