What's with all the SharePoint hype?

Question

SharePoint has been getting a lot of hype these days. There are contracts/job postings all over the place looking for SharePoint experience. There seems to be a big push on Web Part development, which is all well and good, but now I'm also hearing that entire web applications will be hosted within SharePoint. That sounds like it could easy introduce a lot of unnecessary overhead.

I figured I'd put this up for discussion amongst all of you. I'm eager to hear your thoughts.

Answer 1

SharePoint in itself is just a big ASP.NET web site that is highly, HIGHLY configurable. Configurable almost to the point that it can become too complex. However, as a SharePoint developer, it does deserve a lot of the hype it gets, especially if you were to build it from scratch. Here are are some reasons why the the SharePoint overhead can be worth it:

• Web parts can be deployed to a production SharePoint site...without even taking it down for maintenance! This allows rapid deployment of new functionality without the 3AM releases to make sure nobody is using the site.
• SharePoint is a development PLATFORM that contains seamless integration with Office Desktop Apps, Office Web Apps, Project Server, Team Foundation Server, Reporting...It greatly increases the collaboration of everyone involved...from software development to the CEO to the HR department to the...
• SharePoint takes care of the plumbing. It lets you design workflows, web parts, reports, and more without you having to worry about the look and feel (once you have everything configured, of course...LOTS of configuring), having to connect to strange data sources AGAIN just to throw up a new report, having to redeploy the whole site, having to worry about a new piece of functionality (web part) taking down your entire site.

Those are some great things about it, but it definitely doesn't come without its flaws. Again..the configuration is a beast, and changing even the slightest configuration can bring down SharePoint if you don't know what you're doing. However, once you have it set up, deployment of new functionality and maintenance from a developer's standpoint is well, well worth it.

Answer 2

My views on Sharepoint prior to 2010 hasn't been to good - it's ok for internal stuff... But apparently new version is supposed to be really smart but haven't had the chance to get into it yet. Although I am looking forward to getting in there.