To MOSS or not to MOSS...

Sharepoint and MOSS seems to be the buzz at the moment and I've seen more and more developers around me move over to the MOSS camp and I must say I've never been overly interested. I've probably viewed it as many others, too much point and click, not enough code writing...

However, last week I actually started a MOSS/SharePoint course and I guess I've had to reevaluate my views somewhat, there is actually a fair bit of coding to do, actually too much! One of the big things that struck me with Sharepoint development (and this has given me a new found respect for the people who do it I must say) is the lack of tools. Soo much of the work has to be done manually, update this piece of XML (by hand), copy this guid from here to there, recycle the IIS app-pool, refresh the site. Pheew, feels like I'm back in the old gray days working on some remote server with ftp access. And the slightest mistake and you get a almost totally meaningless error message thrown in your face.

So those were the negatives, are there any positives? Sure there is as a development platform it's got an incredible amount of pluming already done for you. Security, collaboration tools, exposing RSS, etc. etc. most of it readily available to be enabled with a few clicks. And it seems that once you get your head around the object model etc. you can do almost anything with it.

I must say thought at the end of the day, being a developer mainly focusing on Internet sites and (at least not at this point in time) not doing much work in the intranet space. I'm still not convinced that Sharepoint is for me.....

The course I'm taking is in two parts so no duobt this rant is "To be continued" after the next installment ;)