Books and Guidelines for SharePoint beginners

Question

I have just decided to start learning SharePoint development, I was trying to find a good book but as you know that there are like tons of books, I am confused as to which book should I start learning from. I have currently found the following books:

• Enterprise Content Management with Microsoft SharePoint
  By Christopher Riley, Shadrach White

• SharePoint 2013 How-To
  By Ishai Sagi

• Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Step by Step
  By Olga Londer, Penelope Coventry

• Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Inside Out
  By Darvish Shadravan, Penelope Coventry, Thomas Resing, Christina Wheeler

• Microsoft SharePoint 2013 Designing and Architecting Solutions
  By Shannon Bray, Miguel Wood, Patrick Curran

• Microsoft SharePoint 2013 App Development
  By Scot Hillier, Ted Pattison

• Sams Teach Yourself SharePoint 2010 Development in 24 Hours
  By Sohail Sayed, Manpreet Singh, Vinu Santhakumari

• Pearson Sams Teach Yourself SharePoint Foundation 2013 in 24 Hours
  

• Beginning SharePoint 2013: Building Business Solutions
  Amanda Perran, Shane Perran, Jennifer Mason, Laura Rogers

• Beginning SharePoint 2013 Development
  Steve Fox, Chris Johnson, Donovan Follette

I have also found different sites for tutorials and training from some questions on this site, The sites are listed below:

• http://pluralsight.com/training/courses
  
• http://www.fastsharepoint.com/Training
  
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/dn448488
  
• http://sharepoint-tutorial.net/
  
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj163230(v=office.15).aspx
  

My Questions:

• Which of the books, training or tutorials site listed above are better for starting SharePoint for some one who is completely new to SharePoint. I know C#, ASP .NET. What are the guidelines that I should keep in mind for learning SharePoint development effectively and should I start SharePoint 2013 right away or should I first learn SharePoint 2010 and then move on to SharePoint 2013?

• Where can I find some projects or tasks that I may try to implement using SharePoint so that I can practice what I am learning?

Answer 1

The big thing about SharePoint is it has many paths for a person to go. One cannot become an expert in all. You can be a developer, administrator, UX Designer and many related fields.

Given that you are familiar with ASP.NET and C#, you should do development. Also when it come to development, now with SharePoint 2013 everyone is trying to make moves towards apps which use a client side object model either JavaScript, Silverlight and etc... Still Server Side coding using C# is a good place to start.

I would suggest you better first get to know the concepts in SharePoint first such as Lists, Workflows, timerjobs, sites, farm, site collection, content databases and so on. Then you can work on getting familiar with Server Side API which you can use your C# knowledge.

Pluralsight courses and Microsoft Documentation are the two things that will work better as I can think. But every book has something for you.

Once you get familiar with the Sever side object model, start building apps. "Microsoft SharePoint 2013 App Development" would be a good book for you to read on that.

Learning SharePoint is a bit bigger process. You have to be patient and have the hunger to explore.

Answer 2

As per the information you provide, Looks Like you already explore the all the possible learning path. Now big question is where to start and what to learn.

You already decide for the SharePoint development. And you have C#,.net skills set which is good for SharePoint development. What i would do.

• 1st of all you need your own SharePoint environment, may be create a virtual machine or get the MSDN subscription which give you window azure credit.
• learn the basic of SharePoint and understand the concept of list/library/site/sitecollection/web applications/ Services applications etc.
• now learn the development technique for the SharePoint.check out the MSDN SharePoint Developer Center and also get the overview of apps development
• I would also go for the training either online of classroom.

Check this link, he summarize all the possible method.

http://sharepoint-community.net/profiles/blogs/how-to-learn-sharepoint