SharePoint : The Perfect Storm

Wikipedia defines a perfect storm as "the simultaneous occurrence of events which, taken individually, would be far less powerful than the result of their chance combination."

Rather than events, in the case of SharePoint, I see the elements of the perfect storm being conditions. Those conditions are:

• SharePoint is widely accepted by CEOs, CTOs, architects, and users all around. SharePoint's user experience is very nice for the most part. I think that the product brings a lot of value to users. This is a good thing.
  
• SharePoint does a lot just out of the box. It has all sorts of useful templates for sites and it has common workflows. However, beyond a certain point (as with most if not all software) SharePoint cannot do what you want without customizing it with managed code (C#, VB.NET, etc.). This too is a good thing.
• SharePoint's developer experience is terrible. I won't go into details.

So on the one hand you have CEOs, CTOs, and architects pushing for the use of SharePoint in the company, and on the other hand you've got a terrible developer experience. The eventual result is a shortage of SharePoint developers and an increased demand for them.

Will enough SharePoint developers leave SharePoint that Microsoft will be pressured into improving the developer experience? Or will there always be enough SharePoint developers to squeak by?

CTOs and CEOs who select SharePoint and need to customize it might start feeling the effects of this perfect storm when they have a harder time hiring and retaining developers, and then have to pay them more.

If you are in the software development business for the money, SharePoint development could be a great cash cow. The only problem is that you have to develop in SharePoint.

The next time you hear a technology is hot, you may want to find out why the technology is hot.