What is sharepoint?

I think that sharepoint - starts out very simple - as
a collaborative file system --- utilizing mostly http -
and of course built on an asp.net framework. And that's
great. But it turns out that a piece of software that
was built with the degree of indirection
contained within the sharepoint framework can't really
maintain a very limited application scope - especially
when a large development community gets a hold of it.

I can say a few things that might give you a little better
picture. It's a big box - that's fairly stable -
but highly tweak-able. ( somebody actually thinks that
tweak-able is a word ).

Nevertheless, there are downsides. Although there is a lot
of documentation and many blogs --- someday I will try and
organize what I've found out there --- there is no simple
guide to sharepoint that is both exhaustive or complete -
so it tends to be a bit of a free for all.

As an example of this, one very important feature of sharepoint
is the web part. I think there was a concept of web parts before
sharepoint - but sharepoint and web parts are very interconnected -
and while they are easy to use - really understanding this
mechanism is a little more challenging. To be clear about
this --- there is a mechanism for creating and deploying
web parts --- and from my point of view this process and mechanism
is all a bit murky for me at this point and in the next few
posts I'm going to focus on this and see if there is
really a bottom to this rabbit hole.