Sharepoint development C# .net

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I have recently been involved in developing our companies intranet with Sharepoint. I have a good understanding of the Admin side of sharepoint (installing/config) and developing solutions with SPD. I'm due to take 70-630 and 70-631 early next year.

What I would like to know is what is the most looked for technology that is used along side sharepoint in the jobs market.

C#?
ASP.net?
SQL?

I have a general understanding of these technologies, but not how they interact with sharepoint and which is the most looked for in the jobs market.

 

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They're all used.

Basically SQL is just the database query language but it's not necessary to write raw queries anymore (you can use LINQ, Entity Framework, etc.)

ASP.NET is what you write the applications in (you can write in either VBScript or C#).

 

Generally a lot of business apps are split into layers, the main three being presentation, business logic and resource / persistence layer.

ASP .NET is used in the presentation layer for web based applications.

C# .NET is used across all tiers but often most heavilly in the business logic layer.

SQL and other technologies like ADO .NET, NHibernate, Entity Framework, LINQ, ADSI/LDAP etc are used in the resource layer.

Basically as LukeP said all the above and more to be a decent Sharepoint developer.

Development is not administration, being able to administer Sharepoint is only a minor advantage when it comes to development.

 

Thanks for that info.

Basically I am still eary in my IT career, and in my current position I have been assigned to develop the sharepoint site over the next few years.

So far I have created quite a few solutions, such as a personal expense claim site.
It allows you to submit an expense claim through a infopath form, digitally sign it, and submit it. Depending on the individual and the amount being claimed it gets passed to one or more managers through a workflow, then finally onto accounts for processing.
I developed the soloution and workflows within SPD and really enjoyed it. But through developing it there have been a few questions I have asked on forums about extra features I would like to add. Most of the replies have been 'you can only do that through code'. Which has moved me onto thinking about learning to develop - We have the budget and I have the desire to learn.

which leads me onto why I asked the question. I want to learn to code to further my personal SP development, and to allow me to produce solutions with more features.
But I really want to know what the 'most desirable' programming language is within SP.

ITJobsWatch has some interesting details on SP top related skills.

1 4565 (56.05 %) Microsoft
2 4342 (53.31 %) .NET
3 3458 (42.46 %) SQL Server
4 3210 (39.41 %) C#
5 2544 (31.23 %) SQL

I presume .NET refers to the whole .NET family - VB etc.

 

.NET consists of many co-operating parts, the main two being the CLR and the .NET framework.

The CLR is a virtual machine that runs CIL/MSIL, various high level languages can target the CLR.

The most obvious two are C# .NET and VB .NET, there are also others like IronRuby, IronPython, F#, Managed C++ etc.

ITJobsWatch just gives stats on Buzzwords found on job ads, don't take it too literally.

All the terms on their own are pretty broad.

I would advise learning C# .NET as it is the most mainstream and modern CLR language.

Learning development skills could take you a number of years, mastery even longer, some people never get there, so its more than just a case of wanting it and having a training budget...

 

ok, so if i was to decide to move into development I think c# would be the language to learn.

Just to broaden my question a little; what other options are there in the sharepoint career path. from my understanding there are Admins, Developers, and Consultants.

My immediate role is to try to move our business into using sharepoint by creating sites, document libraries, and anything else to meet there needs and to keep them coming back.

With that in mind are there any more approprioate courses/career paths to be looking into other than C#?

As time goes on the users needs are expectations from sharepoint will rise I presume, leading to more complex development and knowledge of SP.

 

Development is a career path all of itself, it can involve all the aspects you mentioned and more, you can find yourself doing administration, consultancy, analysis, design, testing, debugging, troubleshooting, coding, documenting, presenting, planning and a whole host of other activities. As such you would need to learn to become a developer, learning C# even though an important step is just one step.

After that its upto you what type of developer you are, you don't have to target just sharepoint, there are many types of programs that need writing, embedded, distributed, N-tier, thick client, thin client, rich client, server/daemon, systems software etc. People are writing everything from google filesystem, computer games, space probes to Formula1 engine management.

If you do chose to stick with CMS and Portal development there are a lot of other products you could learn.
You could learn PHP and Drupal, or RedDot CMS, Joomla, dotNetNuke, etc.

You will have to probably learn C#, IIS, ASP .NET, ADO .NET, SQL Server, SQL, Windows, Office, JavaScript, JQuery, LINQ, HTML4/5, CSS2/3, NUnit, Design Patterns, OOAD, TDD, SOAP, AJAX, WCF, WWF, SSO/Kerberos, XML, JSON, RSS/ATOM etc to just be a sharepoint developer, and thats just the tech skills, so you'll be busy for a while with that anyway.

Sounds like you are developing intranet solutions, requirements can differ substantialy between internet and intranet applications, especially in areas like scalability, i18n, security etc.

Sharepoint dev is already complex enough, plenty of contractors are making good money out of it. From what you've said your users expectations are already beyond your current abilities, in order to meet any reasonable business deadline most shops would look to bring in specialist talent.

 

OK, based on what you have told me I have decided to start with this book Beginning ASP.NET 4: In C# and VB

It has some fantastic reviews and covers ASP.NET, C#, JQuery, AJAX, LINQ, ADO.NET, HTML and a couple of others. It's only going to provide the basics but by the end of it I hopefully should have a good idea if development is for me or not.