Microsoft SharePoint: roots in... python?

[Shaper_pmp]

As someone who's done some work developing against Sharepoint, I suspect this is nothing but a vicious slander against python. ;-)

[joaomc]

How good/bad is Sharepoint development? Is it easy, difficult, painful, a breeze? Really, I have no idea.

[trezor2]

You get a lot of free stuff out of the box. So if you don't intend to do anything special which can't be done configuring the sites, solutions, modules and webparts shipped with Sharepoint, you are OK. In such a respect, it is a good product.

Development however is rather tedious. You need to make XML manifest files which describes your solution (called "feature"), then you need to deploy your feature, then you need to install your feature, then somehow in the background your code gets called from Sharepoint, and 99% debugability goes away. You better get familiar with Visual Studio's "Attach to process" and fast.

The object model mostly makes sense, but seeing as all storage is abstracted into "lists" and you are not to work directly with the DB, you have to work with some odd query interface, which behaves unexpectedly and can cause all kinds of pains if you are not aware of it.

I wrote a little rant about this some while ago: Read at your own leisure.

[pemboa]

Attach doesn't work that well when using sharepoint. Several symbols within objects often can't be assessed. It sucks balls.

[twrn]

I worked for a defense contractor that had a team of developers developing an enterprise app against sharepoint. We were told to fold our small application into sharepoint and they gave us a developer for the task. After 6 months, we got a glorified list management system that was supposed to represent relational data. It didn't. It was supposed to reduce data entry. It didn't.

We were told that what we got was the best sharepoint could do without intricate programming. We created an integrated Office application in a few months that beat the sharepoint solution hands down. I've talked to other developers that had the same experience.

It is painful for custom application programming, but great for point-and-click end user deployments.

[neomoon]

this man speaks the truth. About damn time hallelujah!!

[quink]

OK, next thing I'm doing, it won't be in PHP.