If you’re scared by the recent announcements for SharePoint developers, you shouldn’t be. You can modernize your SharePoint skills easier than you think.
Just recently Microsoft announced a new development model for SharePoint – one based on the web stack, open source web development tools and JavaScript frameworks. It’s nothing like we’ve seen before in the world of SharePoint development. In the past, building SharePoint solutions was all about .NET and Visual Studio on Windows. Last week you might have heard about things like Node.js, Gulp, Yeoman, React, TypeScript and Webpack. So what are these new tools and how do you get started?
For the first time ever Microsoft has chosen not to use a proprietary development toolset for building SharePoint solutions. Instead, they decided to leverage web development tools used by developers all over the world on all platforms. While all these tools are new to us – SharePoint developers, they have been around for a few years now and there quite a few examples what they are and how they work.
At first, these tools seem unfamiliar. But once you start looking closer, you’ll notice that there are quite a few similarities to the tools that you have been using for the past years. To help you set the first step in learning these new tools, fellow-MVP Stefan Bauer, Vesa Juvonen – Senior Program Manager from Microsoft and I recorded a webcast discussing these new tools – what they are, how they relate to the tools that you already know and how you can get started.
SharePoint Framework isn’t available just yet. But the great thing about these new tools is, that there is nothing SharePoint Framework-specific about them and you can start learning today, so that when the SharePoint Framework is released, you can start building modern SharePoint solutions.
If you have any questions, anything is unclear or you missed something, don’t hesitate to reach out. We’d love to help you benefit of the latest SharePoint developer opportunities.
This blog post was originally published on Waldek’s blog at blog.mastykarz.nl