Today I would like to show you how to do Starting SharePoint development. Have you read my previous post: SharePoint developer who’s that? It was very popular and I get some questions about how to start the SharePoint journey. Well, it’s a question which is not so easy to answer as we have to consider a few factors here. It’s my personal opinion here, some people could have different thoughts.

First of all, we have to decide which platform we chose. At this moment we have the possibility to make development with the following platforms:

• SharePoint on premise 2016, 2013 (I am aware of SharePoint 2010)
• SharePoint online

I assume that SharePoint server 2016 will implement some of SharePoint’s online features. Another important point to consider is SharePoint’s on-premise future. I heard different voices here. Some people say that SharePoint server 2016 is the last version and some others that we will see at last two versions in the future. Well, in my opinion, there’s still discussion in Microsoft teams. We have a very interesting example here. We can see a lot of changes in terms of the SharePoint developer certification path – MCSD. At the begging we get information about expiration, then it was extended and now there’s no SharePoint developer path…

Starting SharePoint development. Why SharePoint online?

I will suggest to you a safe way here in my opinion. If you don’t have any SharePoint experience or there’s no need to manage existing on-premise infrastructure forget about the SharePoint server at the begging. You should focus on SharePoint online. Why someone could ask…

• It could be for or against, but cloud is the future. People says that 🙂
• If you learn SharePoint online coding you can write a code for entire Office 365 platform
• Office 365 is key solution in Microsoft portfolio
• Office 365 is most dynamic Microsoft product
• If you learn SharePoint online coding you can use those skills in other, non Microsoft project, JavaScript is back 🙂

How to start SharePoint development?

So we know which platform to choose. So how do we start SharePoint development?

In the first step, you should register at the Office developer portal. You will get free access to Office 365 developer tenant for one year. It’s also good to know that you will get Microsoft Office for free. There’s a lot of training materials. Please take a look at Waldek Mastykarz recordings related to the SharePoint framework, which seems to be SharePoint’s future.

The second website to register is Visual Studio Dev Essentials. You can find their free 3-month PluralSight subscription. This is an online training platform with very good training videos. For example, you can find there Andrew Connell or Sahil Malik training.

We have two more websites to consider. First of all please Technet site. There’s a lot of training materials provided by Microsoft, also for the SharePoint server. The second site is of course  Microsoft Virtual Academy. There’s a lot of things to watch. It’s also a good starting point.

Everything that I wrote here is for free. You will need just time and will to learn. Also please remember that tools for SharePoint development are free. Visual Studio Code or Visual Studio Community edition is absolutely enough for starting SharePoint development.

And if you are worried about tools please check my post on how to get a free developer license for Office 365