ASP to sharepoint development. What should I be aware of? [Career]

Question

I am working as a asp and vb developer for the past 4 years (My first job) and I am tired of working with asp and wanted to move to a new technology (Micorosft technologies).

The company I work for is great. Working environment is great and I have a very nice team. I learn and write about .net development in my blogs and participate in forums like stackoverflow to keep me updated.

I was interviewed for a new team in my company and I am moving to sharepoint development. I have absolutely zero knowledge in sharepoint. I know its developed using asp.net. I want a break from asp and do you think its good to start with it? I have also heard about developers hating sharepoint. Why is it so?

Moving from a asp environment what all should I keep in my mind for sharepoint development? Any advices?

Answer 1

Which Sharepoint version would that be? If it's 2003, you're a bit better off with ASP, but if it's MOSS 2007, you're in for a hard ride, since you will have to get into Asp.net 2.0 first and grasp WebParts afterwards.

Anyway it is, go for it if they tolerate learning team memebers. Staying on ASP is rather completely out of picture for a developer that wants to get somewhere in his career. And MOSS 2007 is a great way to leverage your market value.

Answer 2

I was on the same path as you. I started as ASP and then moved to ASP.NET and finally SharePoint programming. I would say that someone with 2831 (on May 20th 2009) points at stackoverflow does not have to worry about ASP.NET. Programming for SharePoint is programming ASP.NET, you only need to learn some additional concepts and stuff.

The best way to get started is to create some pure ASP.NET applications to learn the concepts. There is a conceptual change between ASP and ASP.NET so you should forget the old way and learn .NET object oriented programming. If you will be working for an experienced team ask for a mentor to help you learn.

You should forget ASP it is an obsolete technology.

There are some people that hate SharePoint development but I think you need to stay open minded about it, it is the fastest growing Microsoft product and it will remain strong as corporate application platform.

Check this question for more details on how to learn the stuff.